(SANITIZED)UNCLASSIFIED PAPERS ON THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA SINCE 1861(SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81-01043R002000010001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 449
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 30, 1958
• Content Type: REPORT

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PROBLEMS AND PATTERNS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
by
Alexander Gerschenkron
The emancipation of the peasantry stands at the threshold of the period
under review. The question as to whether, on the eve of the reform, the system
of serfdom was disintegrating for economic reasons or whether its vitality and
viability were still essentially unimpaired has been the subject of much controversy.
But even those who, like the present writer, tend toward the latter view must ad-
mit that the development of the non-agrarian sectors of the economy was virtually
premised upon the abolition of serfdom.
To say this, however, does not imply at all that promotion of economic
development was a paramount objective of the emancipation. As was true of most
of the agrarian reforms in nineteenth century Europe, the authors of the Russian
reform either considered industrialization undesirable, or, at best, were in-
different to it. The actual procedures chosen reflected these attitudes. In many,
ways they were bound to hamper rather than to facilitate economic growth. The
emancipation involved, first of all, a determination of the land to be given over by
the landowner to peasants for permanent use. There is no question that over wide
areas of the country (and particularly in the blackearth areas) the peasants re-
ceived a good deal less land then had been customarily assigned to them prior to
the reform. Second, there was the question of the magnitude of the quitrents
(obrok) to be paid by the peasants as compensation for land allotments. It is true
that once those rents were set, subsequent acquisition of land by the peasants
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(the-so-called .redemption procedure, by which the right of use was changed to the
right of ownership) was rendered very easy and as often as not did not entail any
additional burdens upon the peasantry. But the original rents were set far above
the contemporaneous market prices of the land. The example of the immediately
preceding agrarian reform in Europe - that of Austria of 1848 - where peasants'
obligations were mostly determined on the basis of "equity," or cadastral values,
e.,i. much. below their market prices, was not followed in Russia.
It might be argued that the two features of the Russian reform just mentioned
should have provided a favorable climate for subsequent industrialization; the in-
adequacy of the peasants land holding in conjunction with the considerable financial
obligations imposed upon the peasants' households could have been expected to
favor the flight from the country and thus to provide a large reservoir of labor
supply to the nascent industry. Such might have been the consequences indeed, if
the reform and the later legislative measures had not erectea considerable barriers
to land flight by strengthening the obshchina, the village commune, wherever it
existed.
An English yeoman who found the cost of enclosing the land excessive could
sell his farm and use the funds so obtained for business ventures outside agri-
culture, or at worst, for covering the transfer cost. A Russian peasant who
wished to leave the village commune had not only to relinquish his rights in the
land, but in addition had to pay, under the terms of the redemption procedures,
what often were very sizeable sums before he could receive his release. If a
member of the household, rather than the head thereof, wished to leave the village
permanently in addition to making the payment, he also required the consent of the
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head of the household. Where the periodic repartitions of land by the village
y
commune were conducted on the basis of manpower at the disposal of the household,
permanent departure of a family member was bound to reduce the extent of land to
_
be made available to the household at the next repartiticrn. In conditions of relative
scarcity of land, the willingness of the head of the household to permit such de-
partures could not be, and in general never was, considerable. Nothing was more
_
revealing of the irrational way in which the village commune functioned than the fact
that the individual household had to retain the abundant factor (labor) as a pre-
condition for obtaining the scarce factor (land). On the other hand, the readiness
of the member of the household to sever for good his connection with the land and
become firmly committed to non-agricultural pursuits naturally was adyersely af-
fected by these arrangements.
It is often claimed that the Russian emancipation procedure followed the
"Prussian model." It seems that Lenin was the first to give currency to the thought.
The analogy is hardly felicitous. The outstanding feature of the Russian reform
_
was that instead of a class of landless laborers, it had firmly established the land-
owning peasantry, and had taken special precautions to keep the peasantry attached
to their land. This was done inter alia in order to satisfy the gentry's need for
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cheap labor. But here again the similarity with the Prussian reform is rather
_
superficial and deceptive. Unlike the Prussian Junkers, the Russian gentry seldom
showed much interest in technological innovations on their estates. The traditions
of serfdom may partly account for that. Under these circumstances, the cheap
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labor assured the estates by the Reform Act may have been a very undesirable
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gift, inasmuch as it discouraged rather than encouraged them to introduce those
_
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improvements in the mode of cultivation which tended to have labor?saving effects
and to increase the capital intensity of agricultural output.
While permanent migration to the city was rendered difficult, temporary
moves on the part of the members of peasant households were much less so. Yet
even in such cases, the permissive rights vested in the heads of the village adminis-
tration and the heads of the household created various opportunities for impounding
some portion of the earnings made in the city. The right to demand and to enforce
the return to the village of the departed member certainly left much room for
pressures and extortions of all kinds. If it is considered that age-long tradition and
inveterate inertia would have hindered migration to industry under any circumstances,
the Russian government by assigning to the obshchina and the mir such a strong role
in the emancipation procedure and in the life of the post-emancipation village had
created a considerable obstacle to the formation of a permanent industrial labor
force in Russia.
If the double pressure to which the peasant economy was exposed - the in-
adequacy of land and the magnitude of the financial burdens - was prevented from
causing a steady and considerable migration from the land, then that pressure it-
self was bound to assume the role of a retarding factor in the economic evolution
of the country. The peasant economy was unable to increase its productivity be-
cause its income net of taxation and redemption payments did not allow of sufficient
investment; at times the low level of income even led to capital depletion. In
addition, the prospect of repartitions militated against land improvements, even if
and where they were financially possible; and the egalitarian nature of such re-
partitions prevented consolidation of land holdings assigned to individual households
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?and-patecluded-Ghanges -in cultivation and crop rotation systems even where ignorance
and inertia of the peasantry did not constitute an effective obstacle to such im-
provements..
In the long run, the scarcity of land available to the peasants in conjunction
with the increase in population implied a steady deterioration in the economic
position of the peasantry, despite purchases by village communes and individual
peasants of gentry land and despite the formation, in the 1880's, of special insti-
tutions designed to finance such transactions.
It is true that the position of state peasants was more favorable than that of
the former serfs in-that their land allotments were somewhat larger and their fi-
nancial burdens somewhat lighter, while the so-called Imperial peasants were in-
between the two groups. Yet these differences, particularly in the longer run, were
not sufficiently large-to warrant a different appraisal of the State and Imperial
peasantry. They too experienced the restrictive effects of the village commune
and the economic development of their farms also was restrained by the action of
the government whose deliberate policy it was to bring their burdens in line with
those imposed upon the former serfs.
It should be added that it would be a mistake to interpret the secular rise
in land prices which -characterized the period between the emancipation and the
First World War as providing relief to the peasantry in the sense of reducing the
real burden of their obligations. Over large areas of Europe market values of
peasant land tended to be a good deal above the capitalized yield values. But in
Russia the tendency was particularly strong. Land values moved upward even
when prices of agricultural products were falling. The land hunger of the
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-peasantry, stimulated by population growth, largely accounted for this discrepancy.
Thus, the rise in land values, far from relieving the peasant economy, was an ex-
pression of-its precarious position.
There is little doubt that the inhibitions upon the growth of output of the
peasants' economy and the consequent limitations upon the peasants' purchasing
power for industrial products were a serious obstacle to the industrialization of the
country. They made it improbable from the outset that peasant demand for in-
dustrial goods _could exercise a strong pull on industrial growth. This was clearly
seen by a large number of Populist writers. Their conclusion was that industrial
development in Rur:$sia was unlikely to start and, if started, was bound to founder
in the shallowness of the. "internal market."
This prospect left the Populists undismayed, because of their aversion to
industrialization and their fears of its social consequences. Yet the predictions
did not come true. By 1914, Russia had taken very long strides along the road of
industrial development. What,had vitiated the Populists' predictions was their
failure to see the Manifold flexibilities and adjustabilities which are inherent in
processes of economic development. The growing purchasing power of the peasant
economy can be indeed important as a motive force of industrialization. Yet it is
but one among -a number of possible alternatives.
Economic development in a backward country such as Russia can be viewed
as a series of _attempts to find - or to create - substitutes for those factors which
in more advanced countries had substantially facilitated economic development,
but were lacking in conditions of Russian backwardness. Such "substitutions" are
the key to the understanding of the way in which the original disabilities were
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over-come-and-a process-of sustained industrial-growth was started-in Russia. It
is these acts of substitution that-came to .determine the specific pattern of industrial
development.
But the process of industrialization is also a process of diminishing back-
wardness. In its course, factors that were lacking formerly tend to become evi-
dent and increasingly important within the body economic. What was once in vain
looked for to serve as.a "prerequisite" or a "cause" of industrial development came
into being as its effect. It is a fascinating pursuit in the history of modern in-
dustrializations to see to what extent the original "substitutes" were thereby
rendered obsolete and disappeared after having fulfilled their function; and to what
extent they were preserved and continued to dominate the pattern of industrial
development in its subsequent stages, even though "-te special need for them no
longer existed.
The present assignment requires this writer to supply, within the scope of
a few pages, a background paper on the last hundred years of Russian economic
history - a period of unprecedented economic change. Obviously, no more can be
done than to select for discussion some significant aspects of that change. Perhaps
the processes touched upon in the preceding paragraph may serve for the purpose.
Over long stretches of the period under review, in manifold ways, in ever-
changing forms, and at different levels, innovation and anachronism seem to
coalesce and to separate, to follow and to displace each other. The remainder of
this paper will be devoted to an attempt to see the peculiarities of Russian in-
dustrialization in terms of these relationships.
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II
The great spurt of Russian industrialization in the pre-revolutionary period
largely -coiricieled -with the decade of the 1890's. Thus, almost thirty years had
passed over the land before the great effort could come about. This was not sur-
prising. The peasant reform would have to be very different if a direct and im-
mediate impact upon industrial growth could have been expected from it. More-
over, even if the-reform had been deliberately designed to favor industrialization
rather than to obstruct it, a certain preparatory period of slow growth was almost
inevitable. The judicial and administrative reforms which came in the wake of the
emancipation were essential in creating a framework for modern business activity.
But other changes, at least equally significant, were much slower in coming.
Certainly a radical improvement in communications was crucial. One does not
have to conjure up the dramatic and pathetic vision of a huge boiler being dragged
by teams of oxen through the deep mud of the Ukrainian steppes on its way to the
construction site of the first blast furnace in the Donbas in order to understand
that some railroad building had to an,tedate the period of rapid industrialization.
Railroads were indispensable to sustain a level of exports consonant with the needs
of an industrializing economy. Railroad materials had to be imported from abroad,
which in turn Meant pursuit of a liberal foreign trade policy with but a modicum
of encouragement-to domestic industry. Besides, a period of rapid growth does
not materialize ci-i-ernight simply because an institutional barrier to industriali-
zation has disappeared. Such a period requires a simultneous development of
complementary efforts in many directions. The component elements of growth
in the individual industrial branches must be adjusted to each other, and only
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when a number of such "development blocks," to use Erik Dahmen's felicitous
phrase, has been created, is the stage set for the initiation of the great spurt.
There is little doubt that the decades following the emancipation can be
conceived as such a "period of preparation." And yet, it is only in retrospect that
it can be so viewed. The deficiency of the internal market, so untiringly stressed
by the Populist writers, might have postponed the period of rapid growth until a
far and indefinite future. The strategic factor in the great industrial upsurge of
the 1890's must be seen in the changed policy of the government. The fear of in-.
dustrialization, so much in evidence in the 1860's was gone. Industrial develop-
ment became an accepted, and in fact, the central goal. Once this happened, the
problem of the peasant demand lost its previous significance. In fact, its relation
to industrialization was thoroughly reversed. It was as though a rotating stage had
moved, revealing an entirely new scenery. The growth of peasant demand for
industrial goods no longer was a prerequisite of successful industrialization. On
the contrary, its curtailment became the objective. To reduce peasant consumption
meant increasing the share of national output available for investment. It meant
increased exports, stability of the currency, chances for larger and cheaper loans
from abroad, and the availability of foreign exchange needed to service foreign
loans.
The Russian State under Vyshnegradski and Witte put the peasantry under
very considerable fiscal pressure. It left the agricultural economy of the country
to its own devices, satisfied that conversion of pastures into grain lands and some
modest rise in productivity on those estates which were cultivated as such rather
than leased to the peasants were sufficient to support the process of industrialization.
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Population of course was growing rapidly. In the closing years of the 1890's
Russian agriculture produced less breadgrains per capita of the population than
had been the case_ three decades earlier. If the increased exports are taken into
consideration, the domestic availabilities were still smaller. A central principle
of governmental policy was to impound a larger share of peasants' output rather
than to take active steps to raise that output.
Thus, the government's budgetary policy was effectively substituted for the
deficiency of an internal market. The continuation of railroad construction on a
large scale throughout the 1890's provided the government with convenient machinery
for the maintenance of demand for industrial products. At the same time, in multi-
farious ways the government either supplied investment funds to industry directly,
or encouraged and facilitated investment in industry. Government action took the
place of what in other countries was achieved by the free pull of a growing free
market, or by forced savings generated either by credit creation, or by the impact
upon current income of previously accumulated claims.
Those, however, were not the only processes of substitution that were
taking place during the period of the great spurt of Russian industrialization. The
Russian government, far from favoring all branches of industrial endeavor indis-
criminately, concentrated its primary attention on the output of iron and steel and
machinery industries. The strategic interest in railroads and the general political
considerations _certainly prompted the government in that direction. But as may
be deduced from comparisons with other countries, this cannot be more than a
part of the story. ,:In a sense, this concentration upon certain branches of industry
also was an emanation of substitutive processes.
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Russia on the eve of its great industrial spurt suffered from many disabilitiet;.
Its entrepreneurs were much too few; their time horizon often limited, their corn-
mercial customs backward, and their standards of honesty not too high. The influx
of labor to industry was inadequate because of the institutional framework that had
been imposed upon agriculture. Such labor as was available was uneducated, rest-
less and fitful in its habits, often trying to submerge the sense of frustration and
loneliness in alcoholic excesses with consequent absenteeism, low productivity,
and rebellion against the rules of factory discipline. One of the few advantages
that Russia, as many other backward countries in similar conditions, possessed,
was the possibility of borrowing technology from more advanced and more ex-
perienced industrial countries. In this field alone, Russia could equal, if not ex-
cel, them. It could concentrate on modern technology so that its factory equipment,
though much smaller in the aggregate, could be much more up-to-date in its
average composition. But the introduction on a large scale of technology from
advanced countries, in its very nature, also meant a substitution of capital for
labor. Far from being irrational in conditions of a backward country, it was the
modern Western technology which enabled the Russian entrepreneurs to overcome
the disability of an inadequate labor supply and very frequently also that of the
inferior quality of that labor.
This is not-to say that lack of suitable industrial labor in itself was not a
hindrance to Russian industrialization. Introduction of a labor-saving process may
mean lower cost per unit of the product; and still the entrepreneurs may find the
resulting saving insufficient to justify the effort of reorganization and moderni-
zation of the plant; his decision may be positive only if he feels that cost reductions
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will lead to a great expansion of output, thus increasing the total profits very con-
-siderably. But a sizeable expansion of output, even though the innovation is labor
saving, will require a large increase in the labor force; accordingly, the decision
may still fall against the innovation, unless the labor needed may be expected to
come forth without too great a rise in wage rates. The point, therefore, is not
that the difficulties which Russia experienced with the formation of an industrial
proletariat were not a bothersome obstacle. The point rather is that the assurance
of government demand for a considerable portion of the growing output in conjunction
with the introduction of modern technology created a situation in which the quanti-
tative and the qualitative inadequacy of the labor supply could be neutralized to an
extent that still permitted a relatively high rate of industrial growth.
A historian of the period cannot fail to be impressed with two aspects of
this process of assimilation of foreign technology. It may be taken for granted
that throughout the nineteenth century, technology tended to become more and
more labor saving. This was true of the individual industrial branches, and even
more so of industrial economies as a whole because of the increasing share of
those industriesrwhere technological progress led to particularly rapid increases
in the capital: labor ratios. It is true, of course, that, broadly speaking, the
Russian entrepreneurs had to accept Western technology such as it was. But if
they had wanted to keep down the capital: labor ratio, they might well have tried
to obtain second-hand equipment built in earlier phases of Western industriali-
zations. The least thing they could do Was to try to import technology from those
countries where technological progress had been less rapid. In fact, the opposite
was true. In the period of the great spurt of the 90's, it was no longer the English
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technolog-y, but the more progressive German technology that came to dominate
Russian imports; and increasingly, the eyes of engineers and-factory management
turned towards the United States whence even more capital intensive equipment
was brought into the country. Thus alternatives were available and there is no
reason to assume that the choices made were not the rational ones.
On the other hand, it would be wrong to see the process of technological
acquisition as one of mere imitation. True, in the last decade of the nineteenth
century, the Russians had as yet very little opportunity for producing equipment
which combined certain features of, say, American and German machinery as be-
gan to happen several decades later. But they exercised discretion as among the
processes that were modernized and those that were left unchanged, often within
the same plant. While the Russian blast furnaces were rapidly becoming bigger
and technically more advanced, the processes of introducing the charge into the
furnaces remained Untouched by this development and workers equipped with
wheelbarrows still carried out the job. Where industrial work was still similar
to that used in agriculture and capable of being performed by an unskilled and
fluctuating labor force, it was allowed to continue to do so.
Finally, there is the problem of bigness. Bigness, in a broad sense, is
of course inherent in the concept of a great spurt. But the industrialization in
Russia, as in so many other backward countries in the nineteenth century, was
also characterized-by bigness both of individual plant and individual enterprise.
There were many- reasons for that. For one, the technology of the nineteenth
century typically favored the large plants, and to accept the most advanced
technology also meant accepting larger and larger plants. The state promoting
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industrial establishments, for good and not so good reasons, showed remarkably
little interest in small businesses. Large enterprises were a much more lucra-
tive source of graft; and the corruption of the bureaucracy tended to reinforce a
tendency that was present anyway for weighty economic reasons. For similar
reasons, the Russian government did little to check the strong cartelization move-
ment within Russian industry which acquired momentum after the great spurt of
the 90's. But what is of interest here is that the bigness of plant and enterprise,
too, must be viewed as a specific substitution process. The lack of managerial
and the entrepreneurial personnel was compensated for by a scale of plants which
made it possible to spread the thin layer of available talent over a large part of
the industrial economy.
But what were the results and what was the aftermath of these develop-
ments? In purely quantitative terms, i. e. , in terms of growth of industrial out-
put, the spurt was truly a great one. The rate of industrial growth during the
90's was around eight percent, and it was even better than that in the last years
of the decade. None of the major countries in Western Europe had experienced
a comparably high rate of change. The very rapidity of the transformation,
however, was making for maladjustments of various kinds. The discrepancy be-
tween the industrial segment of the economy which was forging ahead and the
relatively stagnant agricultural segment perhaps was the most crucial among
those lags and tensions.
Furthermore, the specific processes of substitution, which have been
referred to above, tended to reinforce the heterogeneous character of the re-
sulting economic structure. Contrasts between the new and the old appeared
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within the industrial group itself and within the individual plants and enterprises.
Technology as a strategic factor in the industrial spurt implied modernization of
some industrial branches and not of others. Within an industrial plant age-long
processes based on tools used in the construction of the Pyramids were carried
on side by side with methods representing the last word of the inventive genius of
the nineteenth century. This inevitably was reflected in human contrasts within
the labor force.
But the contrasts obviously transcended the group of labor. They extended
into the managerial group. The technical director, as the chief engineer fre-
quently was called in a Russian factory, may have been indistinguishable from its
Western counterpart. The commercial manager or the entrepreneur as likely as
not was a much more complex phenomenon. He was able to understand and
willing to exploit the economic advantages of the new technology, but at the same
time he carried on attitudes and displayed forms of behavior which differed little,
if at all, from those of pre-industrial entrepreneurs in Russia. This was true of
his relations to consumers, suppliers, credit institutions, and competitors. In
addition, his relations with the governmental bureaucracy called for special,
often very devious, actions. He had to be a different man in his way of dealing
with a German firm-which supplied his business firm with machinery and know-
how, and in dealing with an official in the Ministry of Finance whence he obtained
both subsidies and orders for deliveries. The great spurt in conditions of
Russian backwardness could not fail to give rise to manifold stresses, tensions,
and incongruities. Sociological research which would view those tensions against
the economic background of the mechanics of backwardness should discover a
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rich field for empirical findings and analytical comprehension.
All these disparities, created almost inevitably in the course of the great
spurt, can be seen as problems for the succeeding phase of Russian industrial
development that followed the great spurt. However, overriding all of them in
importance, was the problem which the emancipation of the peasantry did not
solve and the gravity of which was greatly enhanced precisely by the policy of
rapid industrialization. Industrialization required political stability, but industriali-
zation, the cost of which Was largely defrayed by the peasantry, was in itself a
threat to political stability and hence to the continuation of the policy of industriali-
zation. The immediate effect of the basic substitution of the government's budget-
ary policies for the deficiency of the "internal" market was growth of industrial
output. In the longer run, the effects were more complex.
III
What happened in Russia in the nineties of the last century was the great
upsurge of modern industrialization. Nevertheless, certain aspects of it were
not modern at all. Several times before in the course of Russian history, economic
development seemed to follow a curious pattern: The military interests of the
State induced the government to bring about a rapid spurt of economic growth.
In the course of the process, heavy burdens were imposed upon the peasant popu-
lation of the country, the enserfment of the Russian peasantry having been inex-
tricably connected with the policies of economic development. So great were the
burdens and so heavy the pressure, that after a number of years the spurt tended
to peter out, leaving an exhausted population to recover slowly from the time of
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stre-ss-and-strain -that -had.--been-impos-ed--upon it.
There is little doubt that military considerations had-a good-deal to do
with the Russian government's conversion to a policy of rapid industrialization.
True, no immediate military discomfiture preceded the initiation of the new
policy. But the War of 1877 against the Turks was won on the battlefields in the
Danube Valley and the Balkan Mountains, only to be lost in Berlin against the
British and probably the Germans as well. In the course of the Berlin Congress,
particularly during- its dramatic moments, the Russian government had much op-
portunity and reason to reflect that it was not much better prepared for any
military conflict with a Western power than had been the case a quarter of a
century earlier on the eve of the Crimean war. In the short run, Russian re-
action consisted in shifting the direction of its expansionist policy away from
Europe to Central Asia and the Far East. In a somewhat longer run and further
prompted by the formation of military alliances in Central Europe, the govern-
ment turned toward the goal of a drastic increase in the economic potential of the
country.
In the 1890's, a renewed enserfment of the peasantry was, of course, not
in the realm of practical politics. Nor was there any need for such a measure.
The reforms of rural administration which had been introduced with the advent of
-
reaction under Alexander III gave the central bureaucracy sufficient tax exacting
power over the peasantry; at least for some time it was possible to keep the
peasantry in the state of docile compliance. The joint responsibility of the village
commune for tax payments was helpful, though far from indispensable. The con-
siderable shift to indirect taxation further increased the government's ability to
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pay for the industrialization in conditions of a relative price and currency
stability. The fiscal policy of the government was able to perform the function
which at an earlier age had been performed by the institution of serfdom.
The great spurt of the 1890's came to an. end in 1900. The depression of
that year was variously interpreted as an overproduction crisis, a financial crash,
or an effect of economic setbacks abroad, particularly in Central Europe. It is
fairly clear, however, that below the surface phenomena lay the exhaustion of the
tax-paying powers of the rural population. The patience of the peasantry was at
its end. The following years were characterized by growing unrest in the villages
until the folly of the war with Japan fanned the isolated fires into the flame of a
widespread peasant rebellion in the course of the 1905 Revolution. All this was
very much like the consummation of the traditional pattern of Russian economic
development: a quick upsurge compressed within a relatively short period ending
in years of stagnation. And yet, there was a great deal more to the industrial
spurt of the 1890's than just a repetition of previous sequences of economic de-
velopment. It would seem more plausible to view those similarities as the last
emanations, in pre-revolutionary Russia, of the traditional pattern. For the
differences were fully as important as the similarities. Also in this broad sense,
the new and the old appeared curiously co-mingled. Along with the resurrection
of a specifically Russian past, there was also the assimilation of Russian eco-
nomic development into a graduated but still general pattern of European in-
dustrialization.
Two, and perhaps three, factors stand out in distinguishing the upswing
of the 1890's from sirhilar episodes in the more remote past. One of them has
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just been mentioned. During the decade of the 1890's, the Russian government
abstained- from introducing for the sake of the industrialization any far-reaching
institutional change which, while aiding the process in the short run, would have
become a serious obstacle to its continuation in the long run. Neither the insti-
tution of the zemski nachal'nik nor the additional steps taken in the 1890's to pre-
serve and to protect the village commune could of course compare in any way
with the enserfment of the peasantry. That a government firmly committed to the
policy of industrialization went out of its way to safeguard the obshchina seemed
paradoxical. But apart from the fiscal value of the arrangement, it was also felt
that its existence contributed to the political stability within the country. Neither
reason was persuasive. Satisfactory substitutes for joint responsibility for tax
payments could have been easily found; and the events of the subsequent years
showed clearly that the village commune nursed rebellious rather than conserva-
tive sentiments. The abolition of the commune still remained a problem of in-
dustrial policies in Russia, but it was one which antedated the period of rapid in-
dustrialization._
The other factor was positive.- A modern industrialization based on the
creation of fixed capital of considerable durability did not allow of protracted
stagnations as easily as, say, the much more labor intensive economic develop-
ment under Peter the Great ("stagnation" of course to be understood simply in
terms of a very low or even negative rate of growth). The recuperative power
of a capital intensive economy was greatly superior to that of its historical prede-
cessors. And, finally, a modern industrialization is characterized also by a
much more substantial investment in human capital. In particular, it tends to
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bring about, over a relatively short period a considerable change in entrepreneurial
and managerial attitudes as well as, though to a lesser extent, in those of skilled
labor. All this means that the effects of the great spurt reached out strongly into
the future; that the process of industrialization could be resumed at diminished
faux frais and in a form more efficient and less dependent upon the support of the
state.
This indeed is the most characteristic feature of Russian industrial growth
in the years between the 1905 revolution and the outbreak of World War I. This,
too, was a period of rather rapid growth, (some six percent per year) even though
the rate of change remained below that of the 90's. During those years industriali-
zation could no longer be the primary concern of the government. War and
revolution had greatly strained the budgetary capabilities. The redemption pay-
ments (as well as the institution of joint responsibility) had disappeared under the
impact of the revolution. Kokovtsev, first as Minister of Finance, and later as
head of the Cabinet, pursued a cautious policy of thrift. Railroad building con-
tinued, but on a much reduced scale. The execution of such armament plans as
were conceived was being postponed from year to year. In the eighteenth century,
the death of Peter the Great and the withdrawal of the state from active economic
policy spelled the doom of the contemporaneous economic development. But in
Russia of the twentieth century Count Witte's fall and the abandonment of his
policies did not prevent a renewed outburst of industrial activity.
Nothing underscores more clearly the changed attitude of the government
than the fact that its most important action in the field of economic policy was
Stolypin's legislation against the obshchina. In a radical reversal of the agrarian
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policies pursued only a few years earlier, Stolypin's reforms of 1906 and 1910
made it possible for the peasants to sever their connection with the obshchina
through a simple and advantageous -procedu.re, to acquire personal ownership of
the land, and in many cases to swap in the process the numerous strips of their
former allotment for a single consolidated holding.
There is no question that many aspects of the reform were harsh and unfair
to the less prosperous members of the village communes. There is also every
evidence that the government's volte-face was caused by political considerations,
that is to say, by the impressive lesson learned from peasant uprisings during the
preceding revolution. The consequences of the reform for the process of in-
dustrial development were accidental from the government's point of view, despite
some liberal phraseology ("liberal" in the European sense of the term), used in
defending the reforms.
Nevertheless, the potential positive effects of the reform upon industrial
development were indisputable. The authors of the reform, despite considerable
opposition within the government, refused to accept the concept of-family or house-
hold ownership; the ownership of peasants leaving the village commune was vested
in the head of the household. For the first time, the road was open for an un-
impaired movement to the city of family members of peasant families; for the
first time large groups of Russian peasants could, like their counterparts in the
West, sell the land and use the proceeds for establishing themselves outside of
agriculture. The war of 1914 necessarily cut short the implementation of the
reform, but its initial effect was considerable. Both those peasants who had felt
that the separation from the commune would enable them to increase the
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productivity of-the-ix-farms and: those peasants who had been anxious to- leave the
village hastened to-avail themselves of the separation procedure. It was a con-
siderable step on the road to the Westernization of Russia.
And this is the aspect of the reform that is of primary importance from the
point of view of the present paper. The economic stagnation that followed the
reign of Peter the Great was burdened by the legacy of serfdom. The very
modernization of the state machinery under Peter meant that the government was
much better equipped to enforce the serfdom condition upon the peasantry and to
deal effectively with fugitives from serf status. At the same time, the territorial
expansion of Russia kept reducing and making-more remote the frontier regions
which formerly had been the sanctuary of so many peasants in their flight from
oppression. It was under these conditions, that the edict granting the nobility and
the gentry freedom from service obligations marked the acme of the state's re-
tirement from active guidance of the country's economic life. That act, which
finally severed the original connection between serfdom and economic development,
sealed the perpetuation of serfdom as a main obstacle to economic progress.
Both with regard to its historical locus and its "liberalizing" character, the
Imperial Edict of Peter III (1762) bears a certain resemblance to Stolypin's re-
form. And yet, despite these similarities, it is the difference between the two
measures which may be taken as a gauge of the contrast in historical situations.
The great spurt tinder Peter the Great had not led to sustained growth. The tra-
ditional pattern of Russian economic development was allowed to work itself out
fully. By contrast, the withdrawal of the state after the upswing of the 1890's
was marked by a measure which was designed to further than thwart industrial
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progress.
The Westernization of Russian industrialization between 1906 and 1914 ex-
pressed itself in a large variety of ways. To use the previously adopted termi-
nology, one could say that the pattern of substitutions was changing rapidly. To
some extent banks stepped into the vacuum left by the state. In this way, credit
creation policies and some entrepreneurial guidance by the banks continued to
substitute for the scarcity of both capital and entrepreneurship in Russia. But this
mode of substitution tended to approximate the pattern of Russian development to
that prevailing in Central Europe. The credit policies of the banks were still a
substitute for an autonomous internal market, but there is little doubt that one of
the consequences of the industrial creations of the 90's was the emergence of such
a market.
It may be -quite tempting to view again the change between the period under
review and the 90's in terms of Erik Dahmen's dichotomy between development
?
blocs in statu nascendi and development blocs in the state of full completion. But
the facts would hardly bear out such an interpretation. The years 1906-1914 were
characterized by the relative scarcities of coal, oil, and metals. There is a
persistent tendency in-present Russian historiography to present these scarcities
as consequences of monopolistic policies in the basic materials industries. In
some measure, this-may have been the case. But this cannot be the whole, or
even much, of the story. The lag of output in basic material industries antedated
the creation of monopolistic compacts. It would seem to be much more reason-
able, still following Dahmen, to emphasize the rapid forging ahead of metal
processing industries. During the years preceding the First World War, the
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structure of-Russia-n.-.industry was cha-racterized by specific disp-roportionalities.
Once again, though on a-much higher level, industry was passing through a period
of dynamic preparation for another great spurt. Such a spurt, of course, never
materialized. The point, however, is that considering the years 1906-1914 as a
period of formation of new development blocs may help to explain why the rate of
growth during those years was not still higher than it wa:s. It cannot explain the
high growth that was actually attained in a situation where the outside aid to in-
dustry had manifestly declined to a fraction of its previous volume. It is more
natural, therefore; to regard this period as characterized by the effects of di-
minished backwardness, and, in this sense, view the whole stretch between the
end of the 1880's and the outbreak of the war as consisting of two disparate and
still connected parts: the great spurt of the 1890's prepared the subsequent con-
tinuation of growth under changed conditions.
Many of the tensions and frictions that could be so strikingly observed
during the 90's re-appeared, in the second period, if at all, in a much modified
and tempered form. There is no question that considerable progress had taken
place with regard to entrepreneurial attitudes. Without such a progress and, in
particular, without the general rise in trustworthiness of Russian business men,
the banks never could have come to play a powerful role as suppliers of long-
term credit to industrial firms. The general modernization of entrepreneurial
attitudes no doubt rendered the complex of actions and relations of the individual
entrepreneurs less heterogeneous. The decline in the importance of the govern-
ment as an economic agent pointed in the same direction.
The years that have passed since the second half of the 1880's considerably
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increased-the stock of .permanent industrial labor in the country. At the same
time, after 1905, more tangible improvements both in real wages and in working
conditions became noticeable. The reduction in the importance of foreign engi-
neers and foremen in factories and mines also tended to diminish friction. At the
?
same time, the great pressure upon the peasantry had subsided. By contrast to
the last decades in the nineteenth century, the quantity of bread grain available for
domestic consumption rose faster than did the population. The industrialization
between 1906-1914 no longer offers a picture of a race against time, and of pro-
gressive exhaustion, physically and mentally, of the population's power to suffer
and to endure.
Those elements of relaxation and "normalization" in the industrial process
should not, however, disguise the fact that in other respects the great spurt of the
1890's, the industrial upsurge in conditions of extreme backwardness, had pre-
determined the course of the development in the later period. The composition
of the growing industry continued to favor the same branches as before. As in the
earlier period, the stress on bigness was characteristic of both the productive
and the organizational structure. The movement towards cartelization, which was
mentioned before, must be regarded as a part of this continued emphasis upon
bigness. As was true in countries west of Russia, the policies of the banks tended
to accelerate the process greatly. In this sense they were the true heirs to the
policies previously pursued by the bureaucracy. And like the latter, they tended,
if anything, to exaggerate and accelerate the process both for good and bad reasons.
Interest in small enterprises would have strained the organizational and supervisory
powers of the banks as it had proved unmanageable for the bureaucracy. It is
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true, of course, that just-as -many a civil -servant had found opportunities for
personal enrichment in his official connection with large enter-prises, similarly
also increases in-capital, mergers, and mediation of monopolistic agreements
proved a considerable source of profits for the banks. s Still, when everything is
said and done, it was of utmost importance that the stress on large-scale business,
the very essence of industrialization in conditions of backwardness and the earnest
of its successful implementation could be preserved after the withdrawal of the
state.
Russia before the First World War was still a relatively backward country
by any quantitative criterion. The large weight of the agrarian sector of the
economy, the low-level of the national per capita output placed her far below and
behind the neighboring Germany. Nevertheless, as far as the general pattern of
its industrialization in the second period was concerned, Russia seemed to dupli-
cate what had happened in Germany in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
One might surmise that in the absence of the war, Russia would have continued
upon the road of progressive Westernization.
It is not entirely pointless to speculate on what might have happened in the
course of such a development. Diminution of backwardness is a complex process.
As has already been noted, certain paraphernalia of backwardness are shed fairly
soon after the beginning of the process. Other elements of backwardness are
more resistant to change. Thus, .the great school of industrialization tends to
educate the entrepreneurs before it educates the workers; and it takes still longer
before the influence of the industrial sector of the economy penetrates into the
countryside and.b_egins to affect the attitudes of the peasantry. In the latter
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respect, pre-revolutionary Russia saw no more than the very first modest traces
of such an influence. Yet, the likelihood that the transformation in agriculture
would have gone on at an accelerated speed is very great.
In addition to the age-long attitudes which are more or less rapidly
modified under the impact of economic development, there are the specific insti-
tutional and economic factors which are created in the very process of industriali-
zation, and often appear strange and incomprehensible from the point of view of an
advanced country. Yet, they are the stuff industrialization in backward areas is
made of. Some of them disappear after they have, so to speak, fulfilled their
mission. Thus did the Russian government leave the economic scene after the up-
swing of the 90's. It is again extremely likely that the banks would not have been
able to keep their dominating position with regard to Russian industry for a very
long time to come. Diminishing scarcity of capital, and further improvements in
the quality of entrepreneurship in all probability would have in due time enhanced
the position of industrial enterprises to a point where they no longer needed the
banks' guidance. That is what happened in Germany after 1900, and la logique
des choses may have well moved Russian industry in the same direction. Even
so, if the German example had predictive value, the banks would not have neces-
sarily become transformed into an English type commercial bank as a result.
They would have retained their interest in long-term investments, and in this
sense-Russian economy would have remained characterized by a peculiarity
created in the earlier stages of its development. Even more importantly, the
stress on bigness, the specific composition of industrial output, -and the signifi-
cance of cartels and trusts within the industrial structure is likely to have in-
creased rather than diminished over the years. One of the curious aspects of
? .70. ? ?
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the European development was that the process of assimilation of backward-
countries to advanced countries was by no means- a onesided affair. To some ex-
tent, and in some respects, as the degree of backwardness was reduced, the back-
ward country tended to become more similar to the advanced country. Yet pre-
cisely because in the_process of its industrialization, the backward country had
been forced to make use of very modern technological and economic instruments,
in the long run it wa-e-the advanced country that in some respects assimilated its
economy to that of the backward country. A comparison of the structure of, say,
the German and the English economy in 1900 and some decades later, would serve
to illustrate this point.
Russian industrial development around the turn of the century was fre-
quently decried as "artificial." Count Witte used to reject the accusation with
considerable vehemence as meaningless and irrelevant. Probably with justice.
For what matters is both the degree and the direction of "artificiality" or
spontaneity" in the process seen over an appropriately long time. Taking into
consideration the economic conditions that prevailed in Russia prior to its great
spurt of industrialization, it is difficult to deny that the Russian development
fitted well into the general pattern of European industrialization, conceived, as
it properly should be, in terms of a graduated rather than in those of a uniform
pattern.
The only purpose in cogitating about the probable course of Russian
economic development as it might have been, if not interrupted by war and revo-
lution, is to try to cast more light on the general industrial trends that dominated
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the last period of industrialization in pre-revolutionary Russia.
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Still the-question. remain-s whether-war. and. -revolution cannot be inter-
preted as the-result of the preceding industrial-development. Some Soviet
historians certainly incline in that direction. If the -Russian bourgeosie could be
saddled with the main responsibility for the outbreak of the war and if, in addition,
it could be shown that in bringing about the war it had acted in response to the
pressure of its economic interests; if, in short, the process of Russian industriali-
zation carried in itself the seeds of the coming military conflict, then to abstract
from the war in order to elucidate the process and prospects of Russian in-
dustrialization would mean to abstract from that very process. Some Russian
manufacturers may have indeed welcomed the wartime orders for their products.
Yet, the precise mechanism through which such interests of the bourgeoisie were
in fact translated into the decisions reached by the Emperor and his government
has remained altogether obscure. The view just described seems to magnify the
political significance of the Russian bourgeoisie out of all proportion and to sub-
stitute suppositions of various degree of plausibility for any historical evidence.
It might be.-more persuasive to urgue that the government saw in a rela-
tively short and victorious war a chance to solidify the regime and to avert the
danger of revolutioh. And the question then would be to what extent the preceding
industrial development may be said to be leading to another revolutionary cataclysm.
It is true, cif course, that the social and political structure of the Empire
was shot through with manifold serious weaknesses. Opposition to the regime
was nearly universal among the intelligentsia and certainly widespread among
the industrial and-mercantile groups. Since 1912, the year of the infamous massa-
cre in the Lena gold fields, the strike movement of the workers was again gaining
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momentum. And at the bottom of the social edifice there was the age-long re-
sentment of the peasants who had never accepted the rightfulness of the gentry's
ownership rights over the land. The peasantry's land hunger was a steady source
of fermentation. The sentiment in the villages was no doubt further exacerbated
by the blows struck against the village commune and the threat of its dissolution.
A new outbreak of revolutionary violence at some point was far from being alto-
gether improbable.
And yet, as one compares the situation in the years before 1914 with that of
the 90's, striking differences are rather obvious. In the former period, the very
process of industrialization with its powerful confiscatory pressures upon the
peasantry kept adding year in and year out to the feelings of resentment and dis-
content until the outbreak of large-scale disorders became almost inevitable. But
the industrial prosperity of the following period had no comparable effects. Modest
as the improvements in the situation of peasants and labor were, they were undeni-
able and widely diffused. Those improvements followed rather than preceded a
revolution and accordingly tended to contribute to a relaxation rather than an aggra-
vation of tension. Stolypin's reforms certainly were an irritant, but after the
initial upsurge their implementation was bound to proceed in a much more gradual
fashion. In the resurgence of the strike movement economic problems seemed to
predominate, and the Russian labor movement of those years was slowly turning
toward revisionist and trade-unionist lines. The radicalism of the intelligentsia
was clearly on the wane.
To repeat: despite all those changes, there was much political instability
in the country, and at the very least one could have foreseen that a struggle for
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universal franchise to the Duma and for a cabinet responsible to the Duma was
bound to occur soomer or later. Still, from the point of view of the industrial de-
velopment of the country, war, revolution, or the threat thereof must be seen as
extraneous phenomena. In this sense, it seems reasonable to say that Russia on
the eve of the war-was well on the way toward a Westernization, or perhaps more
precisely, ?Germanization of its industrial growth. The "old" in the Russian
economic system was definitely giving way to the "new. " It was left to the regime
that finally emerged from the 1917 revolution, generated in the misery of the war
and the shame of defeats, to create a different set of novelties and to mix them with
old ingredients of Russian economic history to the strange and powerful infusion of
Soviet industrialism.
IV
The Revolution of 1917 redeemed the ancient hopes of the Russian peasantry
by letting them seize the lands of the gentry. In addition, after the end of the civil
war, when the N. E. P. compromise was put into operation, the peasants found
themselves greatly relieved from obligations toward the state as compared with
the pre-war years. At length, the "internal market" of the populists seemed to
have become a reality.
If nothing else but a change in the position of the peasantry had happened
in the Revolution, one might perhaps have envisaged a slow but steady growth in
agricultural output and a rate of growth in industry exceeding that of agriculture,
if for no other reason, because of a sustained shift of many industrial activities
from the farms to u.-ban industries. The increased strength of peasant demand
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was bound to effect a change in the composition of Russian industry in the direction
of greater stress upon "light" industries. Presumably, the rate of investment
would have been lowered and the overall rate of growth of industrial output slowed
down thereby. It was apparently in these terms that Stalin, during the twenties,
envisaged the course of the country's industrial development.
Yet, in addition to the new role of the peasantry, the Revolution also had
established a dictatorial government controlling inter alia the large-scale industry.
Instead of asserting itself through a market mechanism, the peasant demand, if it
were to change effectively the structure of relative prices and the composition of
industry, had to be reflected in government decisions. These decisions, however,
might or might not be the appropriate ones. During the N. E. P. period the problem
expressed itself largely in the so-called scissor crisis, in the fact, that is, that
the government-dominated industry had insisted upon terms of trade that were un-
favorable to agriculture. Nor was any shift toward greater stress on consumers'
goods industries visible. If anything, toward the end of the N. E. P. the share of
heavy industries in total output was somewhat larger than before the war.
It is true that through most of the N. E. P. period the very high rate of
industrial growth overshadowed the difficulties and prevented them from becoming
overpowering. As long as the problem was to rebuild the prewar industry, largely
using prewar equipment and prewar labor and technicians, the incremental capital
output ratios were very low and the rapid increases in the supply of consumers'
goods kept discontent at bay. The situation was bound to change as the prewar
???
capacity of Russian factories was being reached and further increases in output
began to require much more sizeable investment funds.
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This, no doubt, was a crucial and critical moment in the economic history
of Soviet Russia.. The adjustment to a lower rate of industrial growth would have
been difficult under any circumstances. In the specific Soviet conditions of the
later twenties it was aggravated by the political factors. To prevent too deep and
too sudden a fall in the rate of industrial growth, either voluntary or politically
enforced savings were necessary. But the savings of the peasant economy were
small, as, despite all improvements, the absolute levels of peasant incomes still
were very low. To increase the rate of taxation carried the threat of peasant re-
sistance; and a rise in industrial prices charged to the peasants after the experience
of the scissor crisis when such prices had to be lowered in relation to farm prices
was hardly within the purview of practical politics. The legacy of the N. E. P.
policies with their low taxes, downward pressure upon the industrial terms of trade,
and the failure- to provide in time for a shift in the composition of industrial output
in favor of consum-ers goods, expressed itself in a situation of inflationary
pressures where too large a volume of purchasing power of the peasantry pressed
upon too small a volume of available consumers goods.
The "internal market" supported by the peasantry had been regarded for
1
decades as the natural and spontaneous form of industrialization. After what has
been said in the preceding, it may be doubtful whether in conditions of still con-
siderable backwardness the peasant demand alone would have sustained any
reasonable rate of increase in industrial output. Too low a rate of increase in
_-
demand may have proved insufficient to solve the problem of indivisibilities and
complementarities inherent in the process of development. Without a strong flow
of external economies (in the broad sense of the word), the nascent industrial
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enterprises might have found themselves burdened with costs of production that
were too high for successful operation. Paradoxical as it may sound, industry
might have been better able to satisfy a strong rather than a weak increase in
demand.
The immediate problem, however, was different. The change in the eco-
nomic position of the peasantry greatly increased the flexibility of that economy.
Under certain circumstances higher outputs per farming household will lead to an
increase in the peasants' demand for industrial goods - whether adequate or not
from the industry's point of view. Under different and less favorable circumstances,
the peasant economy can reduce the extent of its connections with outside markets
by diverting cereals to production of converted products for its own consumption;
and by assigning a larger portion of the land to fibrous crops for homespinning and
weaving. For the Russian peasantry with its weak marketing tradition the escape
into greater self-sufficiency suggested itself as an easy and natural response to
the economic conditions which prevailed in the second half of the twenties. As the
marketings of grain began to fall off, the inevitable adjustment to a lower rate of
industrial growth seemed to turn into the threat of a negative rate of growth, of
de-urbanization, and agrarianization of the country.
The economic crisis that thus marked the end of the N. E. P. period was at
the same time a political crisis of first magnitude. Inability to maintain the food
supplies to the cities and the growing resistance of the millions of peasants, strong
in their intangible diffusion, seemed to spell the doom of the Soviet dictatorship.
To be sure, a change in the political system of the country would not have in it-
self solved the economic problem. The inflationary pressures still would have
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called for a solution. It is possible that a government truly 'representing the
peasants might have been able to raise taxes and by so doing to establish the equi-
librium between rural purchasing power and the volume of industrial consumers
goods available, and at the same time to reverse the declining trend in agricultural
marketings. Such a government might have sought and found foreign credits and
??
used the proceeds for importation of consumers goods from-abroad; thereby making
?
the increases in taxation less unpalatable in the short run. The immediate problem
might have been solved in this fashion. The question of industrial growth would
have been another matter. Barring further fundamental changes in the economic
structure of the country, the conditions for resumption of industrial growth would
seem..to have been rather unfavorable under such circumstances.
In retrospect, the threat to the continuation in power of the Soviet regime
appears blurred by the indubitable successes achieved subsequently. But it was
real indeed. It was under the pressure of that threat that Stalin underwent a radi-
cal change of mind and embarked upon the gamble of the First Five Year Plan.
Viewed as a short-run measure, the purpose' of the First Five Year Plan was to
break the disequilibrium through increase in consumers goods output based on in-
crease in plant capacity. It was a daring scheme if one considers that its coming
to fruition presupposed a further though temporary deterioration in the situation
as a result of deflecting a larger share of national income into investment and
away from consumption.. Again, in the best Russian tradition, it was to be a race
against time. If the Soviet government could keep peasant resistance within bounds
for the relatively short period of a few years, it 'mightbe able to offer sufficient
quantities of consumers goods to the peasants at terms of trade not too unfavorable
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to them, and thus to eliminate the dangers and to place the relations between the
villages and the city on a sounder basis.
Not unlike the Imperial government after the Revolution of 1905, the Soviet
government was keenly aware of the peasants' hostility to it. In a very similar
fashion it was anxious to find or to create at least some points of support in the
villages which might facilitate its task during the difficult years to come. Stolypin
had gambled on the "strong and the sober,',' expecting the prosperous peasant out-
side the village commune to neutralize in some measure the antagonism of the
majority. The collective farms were originally supposed to perform the same
function. They were conceived as limited injections of communal models into the
individualistic climate of the villages. As long as the number of collective farms
was kept small,?it would be possible to provide them with sufficient state aid, so
that membership in the collective farms would carry real advantages.
The plans, however, did not succeed; alternatively, they succeeded only
too well. The resistance of the peasantry proved much greater than had been ex-
pected. The peasantry which had emerged victorious from the revolution and the
civil war, was very different from the docile mass of the Imperial period. The
bitter struggles that followed developed a logic of their own. In the course of the
"revolution from above" as Stalin termed it and which more justly might be called
a "counter-revolution from above," the original plans of the Soviet government
were quickly rendered obsolete. The dogged defense by the peasants of the revo-
lutionary land seizures evoked the all-out offensive by the government. The
peasants went down in defeat and a complete, or nearly complete, collectivization
was the result.
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The collectivization supplied an unexpected solution to the besetting problem
of disequilibrium, the actual starting point of the great change in Soviet economic poli-
cies. But it also affected profoundly the character of the government's plans with re-
-
-gard to industrialization. Once the peasantry had been successfullyforced into the
machinery of collective farms, once it became possible to extract a large share of
agricultural output in the form of "compulsory deliveries," without bothering much
about the quid-pro-quo in the form of industrial consumers goods, the difficulties of
the late twenties were overcome. The hands of the government were untied. There
was no longer any reason to regard the-First--Five Year Plan as a self-contained brief
period of rapid industrialization. The purpose of the industrialization no longer was
to relieve the shortage of consumers goods. A program of perpetual industrialization
through a series of Five Year Plans was now on the agenda. What was originally con-
ceived as a brief spell became the initial stage to a new great spurt of industrialization,
the greatest and the longest in the history of the country's industrial development.
Any historical contemplation of industrial history must begin with a de-
scription of the proximate chain of causations which connects the period of the
N. E. P. with that ofsuper-industrialization under the Five Year Plans. Such a de-
scription brings out and explains the precise timing of the change that took place.
The discussion must be in terms of the answers found by the Soviet government to
the pressures and exigencies of a given situation. ? Yet to place thg wliole weight of
emphasis upon those aspects of the evolution may not be sufficient. Other forces,
perhaps less clearly visible may have been at work co-determining the course of
development and its outcome. However much of what happened at the turn of the
third and fourth decades of the century was, the product of that specific historical
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moment; however great the change, and however drastic the momentary discon-
tinuity in the process, the deep historical roots and the broad historical continuity
in it must not elude the historian.
If Peter the Great had been called back to life and asked to take a good look
at Russia, say, in the second half of the thirties, he might have had some initial
difficulties on account of changes in language and technology, he might have found
the purge trials unnecessarily cumbersome and verbose, and he might have up:,
braided Stalin for the unmanly refusal to participate physically in the act of con-
veying the modern Strel'tsy from life to death. Yet, it should not have taken him
long to understand the essentials of the situation. For the resemblance between
Soviet and Petrine Russia was striking indeed.
Nothing has been said so far about the role of foreign policy in moulding
Soviet economic decisions. Yet, it must not be forgotten that the smashing defeat
of the country by Germany stood at the very cradle of the Soviet regime. Foreign
intervention in the civil war, however half-hearted, certainly left memories that
were long in fading. The twenties witnessed a gradual improvement in Soviet
diplomatic and commercial relations with foreign countries. But tensions were
ever-recurring and in 1927 there was much talk of military dangers in the course
of the diplomatic conflict with England. Germany, despite the Russian aid to the
Reichswehr, was still the military vacuum of Europe. After 1930 with the be-
ginning disintegration of the Weimar Republic both Russian fears and Russian
-
ambitions were increasingly concentrated on Germany, ?until after Hitler's advent
to power the ambitious were frustrated and the threat of a military attack began
to loom larger and larger from year to year. There is very little doubt that, as so
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often before, Russian industrialization in the Soviet period was a function of the
country's foreign and military policies. If this be so, however, one might well
argue that there was more instability to the second half of the N. E. P. period than
that stemming from inflationary pressures alone. If, as has been indicated above,
the continuation of N. E. P. policies even after a successful removal of monetary
disequilibria was unlikely to lead to a period of rapid industrialization, pressures
for a revision of those policies might well have materialized in any case.
A resurrected Peter the Great would have found sufficient operational re-
semblance between Charles XII and Adolf Hitler, however much he might have pre-
ferred his civilized contemporary to the twentieth century barbarian. Nor would
the great transformation in rural Russia cause him much trouble. He would have
quickly recognized the functional resemblance between collectivization and the
serfdom of his days and he would have praised collectivization as the much more
efficient and effective system to achieve the same goals, that is to say, to feed
gratis the non-agricultural segments of the economy and at the same time to provide
a flow of labor for the public works of the government, which the Soviet regime
accomplished by the'institution of special contracts between the factories and the
collective farms. He would no doubt have acquiesced in the tremendous human
cost of the collectivization struggles once it had been explained to him that the
quantitative difference between the Soviet period and his own time in this respect
was largely the result of the colossal growth in population in the two intervening
centuries. And while_ regretting the loss of annual draft power in Russian agri-
culture, he would have understood that the reduction in cattle herds in the course
of the "great slaughter" actually facilitated the task of,industrialization inasmuch
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as the amount of calories per unit of land available for the feeding of the population
was greatly increased as a result.
Neither the formidable stress on technology in the earlier portions of the
period of industrialization nor the resolute concentration upon heavy industries
would have evoked the visitor's astonishment. True, at times Peter the Great was
given to flights of fancy and attempted to launch in Russia production of Venetian
mirrors and French gobelins, but the great line of his policy, so different from
that of French mercantilism, was essentially devoted to the increase of the country's
military potential.
Thus a pattern of economic development which before the First World War
seemed to have been relegated to the role of a historical museum piece, was re-
enacted in Soviet Russia. The anachronistic - or rather parachronistic - character
of the Soviet experiment in rapid industrialization did not, however, prevent it from
attaining a very high measure of success. On the contrary, the combination of
ancient measures of oppression with modern technology and organization proved
immensely effective. All the advantages of industrialization in conditions of back-
wardness were utilized to the hilt: Adoption of the fruits of Western technological
progress and concentration on those branches of industrial activity where foreign
technology had most to offer; huge size of plant and the simultaneity of industriali-
zation along a broad front assuring large flow of external economics.
To be sure, the tendency to exaggerate and to overdo was ever-present.
In many cases, smaller plant size would have been more rational. In addition, the
very breadth of the effort kept creating and recreating bottlenecks; and the excessive
bureaucratization of the economy absorbed an undue share of the available manpower.
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Yet when everything is said and. one, the result in terms of growth of industrial
output were unprecedented in the history of modern industrialization in Russia.
True, the Soviet official index exaggerated the speed of growth. Rates of 20 and
more percent a year that were claimed at some time never materialized in reality.
It is, however, possible now on the basis of the computations performed by
American economists and statisticians to conclude that the average annual rate of
industrial growth in Russia throughout the first ten years after the initiation of the
First Five Year Plan was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent; the rate fell in the
years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, but rose again
after 1945. Its high level was maintained far beyond. the period of reconstruction
from war damages. In the first half of the fifties, industrial output still kept in-
creasing at some 12 percent a year. And it was only in 1957 that the planned rate
of increase for that year was lowered to seven percent. One has only to compare
these rates with the high rate attained during Witte's great spurt of the 90's
(8 percent) in order to gauge the magnitude of the Soviet industrialization effort.
The success of the Soviet experiment is frequently described as a proof of
the efficiency of a "socialist" system. That is how the leaders of Soviet Russia
like to refer to their achievements. On the other hand, there is a good deal of un-
willingness to accept-the fact of rapid growth of Soviet industry because of the re-
ceived notion of fundamental inefficiency of socialism. Much of it is a question of
semantics. It is at least doubtful, for instance, whether Stalin's Russia could be
described as a socialist country in terms of Anatole France's definition of social-
ism; Le socialisme c'est la bonte. A historian has little reason to get enmeshed
in these discussions.lest he find himself discussing the problem as to whether or
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not Peter the Great was a socialist. Nor is this the place to explain why in the
opinion of the present writer Marxian ideology, or any socialist ideology for that
matter, has had a very remote, if any, relation to the great industrial transfor-
mation engineered by the Soviet government.
What matters much more is the specific nature of the Soviet spurt and the
economic mechanism which sustained it. The essential juxtaposition is between
an about sixfold increase in the volume of industrial output on the one hand and the
level of real wages which in the fifties was still substantially below that of 1928,
with the peasants' real income probably registering an even much greater decline
in comparison to 1928. By holding down forcibly the consumption of the population
and by letting the area of consumers goods output take the brunt of errors and mis-
calculations that occurred in the process of planning, the Soviet government suc-
ceeded in channeling capital and human resources into capital formation, thus as-
suring the rapid growth of that segment of the economy in which alone it was
interested. The Soviet leaders have kept asserting and the Soviet economists have
kept repeating after them that according to Marx the rate of growth of producer
goods output must necessarily be higher than that of consumer goods output. The
reference to Marx is hardly meaningful within the context of the Soviet economy,
which has no specific marketing problem with regard to producer goods. Never-
theless, the assertion, is quite correct as a description of the actual policy pur-
sued by the Soviet government, though not by force of necessity but by virtue of
choice. It means implicitly that as the volume of output grows, so does the rate
of investment in expanding output; in other words, that a larger and larger portion
of national output is allocated to the production of non-consumable goods. It is in
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these relationships that must be sought the essence of Soviet industrial develop-
ment. This has been the strategic lever that permitted the Soviet government to
make use of all the advantages of backwardness to a degree unknown to all its
predecessors.
V
As suggested above, the effects of 17::11rialization begun in conditions of
backwardness may continue for a long time to come. But the specific advantages
of backwardness in their very nature must disappear in the course of a successful
industrialization. Even if no restrictions on trade were imposed by the West,
Russia today would stand to gain much less from imports from abroad than was
the case a quarter of a century ago. What is true of foreign technology is also true
of many other factors of growth. The exhaustion or at least the diminution of labor
surpluses in rural areas and the depletion of the reserves in high-grade minerals,
conveniently located; point in the same direction. There is no question that after
the war Russia experienced the drag of all these vanishing advantages or growing
disabilities. If she was still able to maintain the rate of industrial growth at a
level fairly close to that of the thirties, the reason must be sought partly in the
government's ability to keep consumption down so that the growing disadvantages
were successfully offset by increasing supply of capital; and partly by the great
effort of increasing the quality of the labor force by an ambitious program of
training and education.
It is too early to judge whether last year's fall in the planned rate of
growth will be transitory or whether it will have marked the end of the great spurt
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of economic development. It cannot be the purpose of this paper to indulge in
prophecies. Rather, the possibility that the great spurt of industrial growth in
Russia may be nearing its end, could be used to cast some additional light upon the
recent economic history of the country. In discussing the origins of Soviet industriali-
zation, some emphasis was laid inter alia upon military dangers with which the
Soviet government had to reckon. It is, however, a frequent though natural pitfall
in historical writings to assume that a genetic approach provides full explanation of
a given phenomenon. If the policy of superindustrialization in Soviet Russia had
been dictated exclusively by the needs of defense against foreign aggression, one
might have expected a radical change in Soviet economic policy to follow the end of
the war. This, however, did not happen. The stress on heavy industry and high
speed industrialization continued unabated.
Many reasons can be advanced to explain the fact. Perhaps not the least
important among them lies in the peculiarities of the country's political system.
It is a truism that a policy of high and rising investment rates could not be pursued
in Russia unless by a ruthless and all-powerful dictatorship. But also the obverse
may be true: The dictatorial system could not exist without an economic policy
which provides it with a social function and a justification for its existence. If
this be true, the prolongation if not the perpetuation of the great spurt would be in-
separably connected with the fate of the dictatorial regime. This is the point at
which comparisons with the era of Peter the Great break down. The dynastic ruler
in those days could stop and relax with impunity, but a modern dictatorial system
is propelled by a specific dynamism which it can abandon only at the risk of grave
perils.
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After the death of Stalin the problem of succession has proved a very diffi-
cult one. Concessions to the peasantry, Malenkov's attempt to shift Russian in-
dustry towards increased production of consumer goods, Malenkov's fall, Khrushchev's
decentralization of the industrial organization and renewed promises of greater
supplies of consumer goods, to say nothing of the two recent purges following each
other in quick succession - all these seem to reveal a deep crisis of the Soviet
dictatorship. Krushchev's original effort to dissociate himself from his predecessor
has unleashed a series of effects the consequences of which apparently have just
?
begun to unfold. An entirely open situation has been created in which everything
seems possible except perhaps one thing: continuation for any length of time of the
present confused situation. The road may lead back to a revival of Stalinist policies
including. an undoing of the inchoate measures of relaxation taken in recent years.
It may lead to a period of progressive resistance to the regime, culminating in a
definite abandonment of the policy of high speed industrialization, thus concluding
the Soviet industrial upsurge in a way not dissimilar to what happened in the 90's.
Should, however, the former alternative prevail, it is a moot question to what ex-
tent the rate of industrial growth could be maintained at levels comparable to those
of the thirties and early fifties. The continuation of a steady increase in the rate
of investment would be the most important single factor the Soviet government
could rely upon to counteract the growing effect of the many retarding factors, in-
cluding it might be added the increasing difficulty of agricultural output in keeping
pace with the increase in population. This means that, in matters of economic
policies, Stalinist policies would have to be pursued with a vengeance and con-
sumption standards would have to be held down severely. Yet even in such a case
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one might assume that eventually the retarding factors would assert themselves
and a gradual fall of_the rate of growth to much lower levels would be very diffi-
cult to resist.
VI
At the time of the emancipation, Russia was an agrarian country with a
sprinkling of inefficient industry. Russia of today is a big industrial power. In
terms of aggregate levels of industrial output it has overtaken and surpassed the
advanced countries of Western Europe. A profound transformation has occurred
with regard to technology, organizational methods, and labor skills. The last
century of Russian economic history has resulted in a far-reaching Westernization
of the country's economy.
And yet, the old curse, so clearly perceived by Plekhanov, still lies upon
Russia's economic development: The processes of Russian Westernization are un-
Western. It still seems to be true, as it was several centuries ago that for every
step which Russia takes along the road of Westernization in one respect, it must
pay, and pay dearly, by taking steps which, in some other respects, lead it away
from the West.
The process of industrialization in a backward country perforce involves
a certain period during which consumption is being reduced in favor of capital
formation. After the initial phase is over consumption begins to rise, reaches
again the level at which it was curtailed previously, and then continues to increase
more or less pari passu with the increase in national income. The extent to
which this generalized sequencewas actually reproduced in reality varied from
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case to case. The depth of the decline in consumers real incomes, the length of
the time that elapsed before consumption could return to its "ante-spurt" level,
the speed at which further increases in consumption were diffused throughout the
various groups of the community depended on many factors: The individual
country's degree of backwardness, the course of the international cycle at the time
of the great spurt, the role of foreign trade and capital imports in the process, the
strength of the labor movement, the institutional framework in agriculture and so
on. By and large, however, the sequence is a simplified but correct description
of the story of the nineteenth century industrialization in a number of major
European countries.
As has been stressed in the foregoing pages, Russian economic history
tells a different story, or, more precisely, it tells only the first half of that story.
Except for a brief and uncertain glimmer of coming improvements in the years pre-
ceding the outbreak of the war in 1914; and except for the period of return to pre-
war levels (or somewhat better than that) from the ravages of the civil war, the
Russian population has failed to derive any perceptible advantages from the long
period of industrialization.
The reason for that lies in the existence of the dictatorship which no doubt
has contributed to the course of industrialization more than any other single factor
and which at the -same time has prevented the consummation of the process upon
patterns observed in the West. The Westernization achieved under the aegis of an
Oriental despoty has had to remain unfinished.
As stated before, it is possible and indeed likely that in the future the
Soviet dictatorship may have to acquiesce in a gradual fall of the rate of industrial
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growth to levels considerably below those attained in the past. This can be the re-
sult of a growing scarcity of several ingredients of which industrial growth is made.
But this decline in the rate of growth need neither be caused nor accompanied by
larger shares of consumption in national income. There is no economic reason
why the Soviet system could not go on, more or less indefinitely, channeling most
of the annual accretions to national output into investment and keeping the levels
of per capita consumption fairly stable. In other words, there is no economic
force compelling the Soviet government to complete the process of industrialization.
And that is as far as an economic historian can go. It is with a certain
sense of frustration therefore that he turns away from his contemplation of a century
of Russia's economic history. It always was a "political" economic history and it
is that now to an extent never witnessed before, at least in its modern periods.
The keys to the understanding of the nature of past economic change, let
alone to its probable future course, lie outside the narrow purview of economic
factors and rela.-tions. They must be sought in a sociology of power exercise by
dictatorial governments, in a sociology of popular discontent. So far, students
of Russian economic development have been compelled to work with rough and
ready generalizations. They know that much in Soviet industrialization makes sense
in terms of a "power for power's sake" assumption. They realize that the Soviet
identification with socialist ideology, though thoroughly revised and denaturalized,
has wrested from the Russian people the weapon of socialist protest which, along
_
with other factors, contributed so much to the humanization and consummation of
industrial-proce-sses in Western Europe. They are aware that the policy of per-
petual foreign tensions has been an. effective tool for eliciting a modicum of
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allegiance froth an unwilling population. Yet more is needed than impressionistic
insights and ad hoc hypotheses. An economist concerned with the process of
Russian economic growth has every reason to wish that the present Symposium
will make a serious contribution to a searching and systematic exploration of these
problems.
a
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00
THE RUSSIAN EXECUTIVE
by
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Executive power combines policy making with direction of policy execution.
It is this combination which endows the executive organ in the governmental
structure with its crucial functional importance and which vests it, or rather the
persons who symbolize or control it, with the mystique that normally surrounds a
head of state or monarch. In the minds of most people, a president, a king or even
a premier, and today in one third of the globe a first secretary of the Party, plays
the role of leader, much in the tradition of the family head, the village elder, or
a tribal chief. It is on the chief executives that society has depended through the
ages for a sense of direction, and they have stood at the apex of the social and
political hierarchy whenever men have come together because of necessity.
Executive power may in fact be the oldest and the most necessary social institution.
It has taken many forms, it has established various channels for its achievement
ranging from birth to purposely perpetrated death, and it has been endowed, at
various places, times and in response to varying requirements, with different
ranges of authority. Nonetheless, for our purposes it might be possible and use-
ful to distinguish in broad terms between two types of executive power usually
found since the rise-of the modern state: the constitutional and the autocratic.
The first, somewhat of more recent vintage and normally a product of a
more sophisticated_ sfage of social, cultural and political development, usually
involves an executive organ operating within confines delimited by an institutional
. !Po
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e structure in which the executive power is both shared with other governmental
organs and restricted even within its own sphere by a series of formal and informal
restraints. The most classical sharing of power is, of course, that involving the
separation of power into the executive, legislative and judicial parts, each rela-
tively free from the domination of the other. The restraints involve both legal
ones on the arbitrary exercise of power, and those inherent in the pluralistic
character of modern society which produces its own shifting patterns of social al-
liances, pressure groups and veto groups. In such a context the executive power,
while not deprived of its functional significance, is prevented from becoming the
dominant and relatively unrestrained source of political leadership.
The autocratic executive, by way of contrast, is relatively unhindered in
the exercise of its power and does not share it with other organs, such as the
judiciary or the legislature, since they are either absent or subordinated to the
executive. Formal restraints, such as legal injunctions, are also either absent
or circumvented, while informal restraints, for instance like those involving the
church as a major-institution, are somewhat more elastic in the assertion of their
claims against the executive. The altocratic executive is, in fact, and in brief,
the central, dominant and leading governmental organ.
It should further be noted that the autocratic form of executive power is in
many ways the oldest and the most basic type. The constitutional form, a much
more complex type, has arisen only under certain favorable conditions-of social- -
stability, economic well-being and under the guidance of an enlightened elite.
These conditions have not been as frequent as it might be desired. A mere glance
at the political history of mankind reveals that in most places, at most times,
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most people have lived under some sort of autocratic, that is to say non-responsible
and non-representative, form of government. This observation, possibly trite,
is nonetheless pertinent to the problem of continuity and discontinuity in the Russian
executive between the years 1861 and 1957. Throughout the century, with one brief
interlude measured not even in years but in mere months, the Russian executive
1
has been an essentially autocratic one.
The autocratic character of the Russian executive during almost this entire
period, and consequently also the important element of continuity, can be brought
out in sharper focus if we attempt to examine more closely some of the salient
features of the Tsarist and Soviet executives to see how they show a definite per-
petuation in autocratic pattern. What have been some of the important political
characteristics of the Russian executive during the last one hundred years?
To a political observer the concentration of power in the executive organ
to the 'detriment of the judicial or legislative bodies, might well' be the crucial
criterion. The supreme authority of the Tsar as the autocrat was acknowledged
by basic law and cemented by tradition. The supreme power, vested in the Tsar,
was exercised on his behalf and at his will by ministers selected, appointed and
dismissed by him. The ministers were sometimes headed by an informal chair-
man of the ministerial council who, at least nominally, was the Tsar's closest
advisor. How-ever, uriiike western practice, it was always the Tsar, and not the
chairman (a post not regularized until the twentieth century), who personally
selected and nominated the members of the ministerial committee. Thus even
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the element of indirect restraint on the Tsar, inherent in the cabinet system with
alb
the ministers developing a measure of institutional authority of their own, was in
this case absent. As a result cabinet ministers did not feel compelled to coordinate
their operations with the chairman of their council and rarely did they meet in a
body. The normal practice was for the Tsar to closet himself with one or more
ministers and to decide in this small group what the policy on an issue ought to be.
In the case of the more important policy posts, such as foreign affairs or defense,
the ministers dealt directly with the Tsar even as late as the twentieth century
when the practice of appointing a premier became institutionalized. V. N.
Kokovtsev recalls with a touch of bitterness how the minister of internal affairs
neglected to keep him abreast of developments or how the minister of war used to
obtain funds for the ministry without even consulting with the prime minister. 3
Of course, a particularly strong-willed chairman could resist these tendencies
(Stolypin tried); nonetheless that seems to have been the general pattern. As a re-
sult of this poor bureaucratic coordination on the top governmental levels, matters
of high policy involving the executive power were resolved through the direct inter-
vention of the Tsar to whom the central governmental organs, i. e. , the Ministerial
Committee, the Council of the Empire, the Senate, and the Holy Synod were
4
directly subordinated.
A further aspect enhancing the personal power of the Tsar was the
monarch's practice of relying on a coterie of personal favorites. Chief govern-
mental posts would.often be filled with them. These appointments did not neces-
sarily involve men distinguished by specialized knowledge of a particular aspect
of government but rather persons considered as personally loyal to the Tsar and
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to the general orientation that he stood for at the moment--be it a liberalizing or
a consdrvative one. As a result, the Tsar became the focal point for competing
groups: those in favor of reforms and those against change felt that their objectives
could be achieved only if the Tsar could be won over and would make his appoint-
ments accordingly. Growing political conflict thus enhanced the political influence
of the Tsar since reform, of whatever kind, could be achieved only with him and
through him.
An additional factor in the autocratic pattern was the device of parallel in-
formal and formal channels of e2ecutive power. Apart from his chosen ministers
(whom after a while the Tsar would begin to suspect of harboring views alien to
him, and which in fact the ministers frequently acquired by being brought into
contact with the realities of Russia once appointed to cope with them), the Tsar
would consult special advisors not burdened with executive posts. These would
most frequently be drawn from among his personal courtiers, many of whom held
high military ranks and were devoted and disciplined servants of the Tsar,
5
jealously protecting his power but often suffering from lack of native intelligence.
The most notable exceptions in this period from the pattern of courtier-advisors
were Pobedonostsev and Rasputin; the latter, however, influential rather through
?
the Tsarina than the Tsar. 6 Pobedonostsev's relationship with Alexander III is
particularly illustrative of the role played by eminences grises in autocratic
regimes. He was Alexander's advisor on policy and a vigorous defender of the
Tsar's power against real and imagined encroachments on the part of those
allegedly favoring constitutionalism. He effectively torpedoed Loris-Melikov's
cautious reforms and urged the Tsar, with success, to replace Loris-Melikov
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with a more rigidly minded minister. Pobedonostsev's correspondence with the
e
Tsar, skillfully exploiting the prejudices of this intellectually limited monarch
fearful of further reforms and mindful of the assasination of his father, his personal
intrigues, his little coups, his distrust of intellectuals, and his general philosophi-
cal position;7 immediately bring to mind an analogy with Stalin. Pobedonostsev
was in one person Stalin's Poskrebyshev and Zhdanov (but without the latter's
political role and position as erstwhile heir apparent). 8 He provided the monarch
with informal sources of information and served as his "ideologue": chief defender
and rationalizer of the status quo. 9
Soviet political practices have not, on the whole, deviated significantly
from the pattern sketched above. Throughout most of the political history of the
Soviet Union one-man rule has been the norm and recent events do not augur an
imminent departure from long-established practice. Indeed, it has been argued
cogently that a system such as the Soviet cannot operate without producing over-
whelming internal pressures towards the elevation of some individual to the top of
the political structure. Soviet political leaders, furthermore, have not come
from among the ranks of the administrators but from the party which endows them
with certain aura of "scientific" insight into history, analogous to the personal
"charisma" of the annointed Tsar. The party secretaries, while not ignoring the
significant role played by the bureaucrats, have maintained the tradition of
keeping the administrators tied to administrative procedures and have retained
policy-making as their own domain, to be shared with those of their choosing. It
was only with_Stalin's assumption of the premiership that the party and adminis-
tration came fo be linked at the top, but throughout the Stalinist period little doubt
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remained as to which post was politically the more important. Khrushchev's
career is mute testimony to the point. While coordination of decision-making has
probably improved since the Tsarist days, there is no doubt that problems of
policy are still resolved by informal cabals of "politicians" and not by adminis-
trators. Stalin with Poskrebyshev and Malenkov for administrative-personnel
matters, with Zhdanov for ideological issues, and with his more trusted Politburo
members (depending on the dictator's whims) for broader consultation; Khrushchev
with his reliable "apparatchiki" as the source of necessary support and counsel,
and sometimes as the manpower for important administrative appointments. 10
Given the voluminous literature on Soviet politics, these brief observations might
suffice in suggesting some strong parallels with the previously sketched pattern of
Tsarist executive power.
Another important area of political relationships, pertinent to this investi-
gation, involves :the related questions of political centralization and political
coercion. While the latter, as we all know, does ?lot necessarily follow from the
former (e. g., France), there is a strong tendency in regimes which are not con-
stitutional for the two to merge. That was the case under the tsars, and that is
the case today in Soviet Russia. In Tsarist Russia centralization and coercion
took the form of strict subordination of local authority (e.g. , the Gubernator, the
Gradonachalnik or, since 1889, the Zemskii nachalnik, as well as the Stanovoi,
the Ispravnik, and the Uryadnik), to the Minister of the Interior11 and the em-
ployment of centrally controlled police power for political ends. Of course, a
particularly dynamic governor could achieve a certain amount of autonomy
(especially in an outlying region) but usually by virtue of his ability to anticipate
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the desiderata of St. Petersburg and to execute them more efficiently than even
anticipated. 12In this sense, there is a strong resemblance to the able and ener-
getic Stalinist satraps in the republics: people like Bagirov, for instance, who
held his post for some 15 years without interruption. Centralization, however,
normally breeds overbureaucratization and the Russian local officials were fre-
quantly swamped with dreary paper work and red-tape?again much like their
Soviet counterparts. 13A measure of internal decay is a corollary of autocratic
bureaucracies.
Political coercion was also a major preoccupation of the Russian executive
organ--a preoccupation lasting to this day. The police was under the adminis-
trative supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, and the Chief of the Police was
appointed by the Minister, was personally responsible to him, and retired when-
ever the Minister retired. Following the reorganizations of 1880 and 1882 the
Assistant Minister of the Interior became the Commander of the Special Gendarme
Corps--roughly the equivalent to the MVD troops. The Okhrana, part of the
Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, provided the intelligence and
counter-revolutionary operations. This was the political branch. 14With rising
ferment there was a growing tendency to exempt political cases from judicial
"interference" by placing them under the jurisdiction of military courts. Between
1891 and 1901 all political cases were handled by military tribunals, and-the extra-
ordinary procedures provided in the decree of August 14, 1881, on "Measures for
the Preservation of State Order and Tranquility, " were renewed every three years
until the fall of Tsardom. 15Death sentences, which (as in Soviet Russia until very
recently) were applied only in political cases, i. e., for acts undermining the
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?
executive power, were imposed with sufficient frequency to underscore the auto-
cratic character of the regime. 16
A common characteristic of autocratic regimes is .the effort on the part of
the executive branch to subvert judicial independence for the sake of political ends.
In Tsarist Russia this took the form of direct and indirect pressure on judges, 17
removal of political cases from the jurisdiction of established tribunals (as indi-
cated above), promulgation of emergency punitive measures (e. g. , 1905), and ad-
ministrative dispensation of justice. In the words of the last chief of the Ochrana:
"There was only one form of extra-judicial punishment, and that was administrative
banishment; sentences of up to five years could be pronounced. "He adds further
that this was "frequently but leniently applied." The absence of a strong legal
tradition in Russia facilitated these deviations from the rule of law which, when
firmly rooted, inherently serves as a check on executive power. 19
The Soviet parallels are self-evident. Political centralization in the USSR
is achieved, despite constitutional provisions, by the subordination of republican
(and lower) organs to_the central political administration in Moscow. Beyond that,
the party- acts as the:chief coordinating instrument and has lately acquired an even
more important coordinating capacity as a result of the economic reorganization.
20
Soviet archives, such as the Smolensk Oblom and Oblispolkom, leave little
doubt that, underneath ficticious lip-service to federalism and the importance of
local initiative, central executive control is indisputable and has been so during
the entire Soviet period despite some modest efforts during NEP to give meaning
to republican autonomy. Organized violence, to protect the Soviet form of govern-
ment and hence to destroy all real and potential opponents, has been associated
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from the very beginning with central executive power and has not been impeded
by excessive judicial sensitivity on the part of the Soviet leaders. Vyshinsky' s
statement that the contents and form of judicial activities cannot avoid being sub-
ordinated to political class aims and strivings 21 still holds today, even though
its author may have been at least partially repudiated. Death penalties for political
crimes have been applied more generously than under the Tsars and administrative
organs have freely imposed severe penalties on those accused of political offences.
Centralization and coercion continue to be important attributes of the executive in
Russia.
One final similarity between the executive organs of Russia before and after
the 1917 revolution lies in an area which need not be a characteristic of autocratic
regimes but which has been important to the maintenance in power of these Russian
regimes. That is the relationship of the executive with the military. In many
autocratic regimes, political power becomes so dependent on the military es-
tablishment that power ultimately passes to the military. Not so in Tsarist Russia
nor in Soviet Russia. Apparently the Russian military leadership has developed,
somewhat like the Russian Orthodox Church leaders, a sense of political non-
involvement which makes it difficult for any would-be Bonapartist leader to use
the army as a cohesive unit for political purposes. In the case of the Tsar there
were the elements of personal loyalty and wise personnel policy: e. g., many high
officers occupied influential and lucrative administrative posts. In the USSR there
might be ideological loyalty and there is certainly a complex network of police and
party controls and purges. Whatever the technique or causes, the political effect
22
is similar.
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In view of all the preceding it might be said that a crucial element of conti-
nuity in the Russian executive 1861-1957 has been the almost uninterrupted mainte-
nance of an autocratic pattern of executive power, with the resultant minimization
of restraints on the arbitrary exercise of that power. In that sense Soviet Russia
merely continues on a trail blazed by centuries of earlier Russian political tradition.
But this merely establishes the broad outlines of continuity and hardly exhausts our
problem. Are historical parallels enough to posit historical continuity?
II
Within the framework of an essentially autocratic pattern there are
significant differences between the Tsarist and Soviet executives, both in degree
and kind, which demand investigation and theoretical evaluation. To that task we
now will turn. In so doing, it might be opportune at this stage to examine again the
nature of restraints on political power and see to what extent these in fact had been
subverted by the Tsarist and Soviet executives respectively. A useful device
might be to distinguish between: 1) the direct restraints, expressed through
pacta conventa such as the English Magna Carta or the Polish Nihil novi... , the
Bill of Rights, constitutional guarantees, a rule of law, or even the broad consensus
of tradition which rules out certain types of conduct, such as the use of violence;
2) the indirect restraints which stem from the pluralistic character of all large-
scale societies and-which necessitate adjustment and compromise as the basis for
political power, e. g-. , the churches, the economic interests, professional,
cultural or regional-pressure groups, which all impede the exercise of unrestrained
power; and 3) the natural restraints, such as national character and tradition,
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climatic and geographical considerations, kinship structure and particularly the
primary social unit, the family. These also act to restrain the scope of political
23
power.
Having made these distinctions we cannot fail to note that the Tsarist exe-
cutive, in the final analysis, subverted effectively only the first kind of restraints,
sometimes came into conflict with the second, and never challenged the third. Its
relationship with the church or the zemstvos was one of control; with the growing
industrial and middle class, broadly speaking, one of adjustment. In so far as the
family is concerned, it never went beyond the point reached by most modern states--
insistence on education and a degree of patriotic conformity. The Soviets continued
this subversion of the direct restraints, but went beyond that in destroying the
second kind and effectively challenging, if not entirely overcoming, the third. We
thus have a broad area in which important differences appear in significant focus
and demand closer scrutiny.
The question arises: if both executives can be considered autocratic, why
is there such variation in the relationship between political power and political re-
straint? The answer is to be found in the nature of the basic attitude of these exe-
cutives towards the existing society. A traditional dictatorship, with its paternal-
istic sense of authority, recognizes a transcendent system of values which inherently
limits its otherwise institutionally wide scope of action. The Tsarist executive
was motivated precisely by such curious mixture of autocratic paternalism and
strong conviction in the immaturity of the people. This made it frequently resort
to violence but yet never allowed it to seek the logical conclusion of that violence,
e.,i. complete extermination of enemies, because of the conscious and unconscious
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assumptions inherent in the paternalistic attitude. The powers-to-be in the
_ _
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Tsarist executive, ranging from Pobedonostsev or Rasputin to Loris-Melikov or
Stolypin and embracing the Tsars, all shared in the desire to defend the broad
outlines of the status quo, although obviously differing on such specific measures
as need for reform or desirability of reaction. But commitment to the status quo
inherently involves a limitation on power by that status quo, and a measure of ac-
ceptance of the values inherent in the status quo. If one takes society and the
political system, as they are, more or less as given, then one's power is fitted
into the existing framework of that society, even if such filings as law and consti-
tution (i.e., direct restraints) are not too vital. The other types of restraints
compensate somewhat for this absence of the direct restraints.
The Soviet attitude, motivated by an ideology which puts a premium on
conscious political action on the basis of a relatively defined and dogmatic action
program (qualities lacking in the more general and traditional viewpoints of the
Tsarist reforms even), aims at the transformation of existing society and hence
rejects it as is. This act of rejection liberates the Soviet leadership from limits
inherent in the status quo, and the conviction of the Soviet leaders that they possess
z an insight into the inevitabilities of history justifies all their acts. The reliance
on a revolutionary movement, for which there is no parallel in Tsarist Russia,
gives the leadership an independent tool for the destruction of restraints on its
power, even if some bureaucrats (because of their professional interest in a measure
of stability) are wary of excessive change. As a oresult, the power of the executive
becomes pervasive, penetrating the entire society and maintaining its grip even
after the impetus of the initial blows fades and the new society begins to take shape.
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By then the society has become both moulded and penetrated by political organs
which parallel the purely administrative structure and which give the top executive
a significantly greater scope of action. It could even be argued that at this stage
the distinction between the political system and society (which could be made in the
case of Tsarist Russia) becomes meaningless. At the same time, because of the
dynamic and ideological quality of the struggle undertaken, the executive is much
more conscious of the need to keep its movement vital, especially as the elimination
of pluralistic groups tends to give the movement a monopoly on power without the
invigorating effect of continuing competition. Purges thus become the inherent
device for coping with this situation and maintaining the revolutionary dynamic.
The process of pulverizing society destroys effectively all political op-
position and leads to the mobilization of all social energy for the achievement of
the politically defined goals. The result is a far greater pattern of compliance to
political power_than under the Tsarist executive. While many examples could be
cited involving such fields as the arts, sciences or the press (despite censorship,
the Tsarist press was an example of diversity when compared to the Soviet), 24
let us glance again at the handling of political cases and the general problem of
political opposition to the regime in power. We have noted the summary treatment
of political opponents by Tsarist military tribunals and the relative absence of
inhibition with respect to the execution of such opponents. At the same time, we
must note spectatular cases of judicial independence even in the more violent days
of Russian political history. In the trial of Vera Zasulich the presiding judge, at
the risk of prejudicing his future career, effectively resisted political pressure
from the executive, the defence made impassioned appeals on behalf of the
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defendant and the jury, acting with an overriding sense of justice, acquitted her to
the accompaniment of thunderous applause of the assembled. What a contrast with
the behavior of the auditorium and the judges in the Hall of Crystals exactly sixty
years later! At the non-jury trial of the Tsar's assassins (the government had be-
come more cautious) the chief defendant Zhelyabov unflinchingly defended his
position and forcefully demanded that a jury trial be held--a behavior not noted in
Soviet political cases. Until the collapse of Tsardom, many defense lawyers
courageously and devotedly defended, in many cases successfully, political de-
fendants accused of subversion or revolutionary activity. Soviet judicial history
since Stalin is not marred by such episodes.
The fact that the executive power in Russia under the Tsars was committed
to a defense of a status quo in which the autocratic power was traditional while the
society itself was changing with increasing tempo under the impact of slowly ex-
panding literacy, growing urban centers, and spreading consciousness of the need
for change, meant that the regime's security was more and more frequently
challenged by revolutionary groups desiring drastic reforms. The executive could
not take measures violent enough to uproot and wipe out all opposition without shat-
tering much of the status quo. Absence of technology, while important, was not
crucial; certainly revolutionary regimes in the past (e.g. , Cromwell or Napoleon)
have been able, because of their revolutionary liberation from existing societal
limitation, to cope effectively with domestic opposition. As a result, much of
the political history of the last few decades of Tsarism could be written in terms
of political plots, conspiracies, assassinations of almost countless important
officials (not to mention the Tsar), and intensive revolutionary propaganda. 25
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While it would be erroneous to exaggerate their political significance, they did
help to set the political atmosphere of the time. Pobedonostsev's letter of advice
to Alexander III, shortly after Alexander's accession to the throne, catches the
flavor of internal fear, bred by conspiracy, terror and ineffectual counterterror.
He writes:
1) When you are retiring, Your Majesty, do shut the
doors behind you not only in the bedroom but in all
adjoining rooms, the hall included. A trusted person
should carefully check the locks and make certain that
inside door bars be slid shut. 2) Definitely check
every evening before retiring whether bell wires are
intact. They can be easily cut. 3) Check every evening
underneath the furniture whether everything is all right.
4) One of the aides-de-camp ought to sleep nearby Your
Majesty in the same apartments. 5) Are all persons
around Your Majesty trustworthy?26
And the revolutionaries, whom Pobedonostsev so feared, even though frequently
tracked down, arrested and executed, combined their revolutionary zeal with a
mixture of remanticism and fanaticism which somehow would seem out of place
among the current Soviet generation of tekhnikum students. 27
The Soviet executive has till now avoided being faced with such a situation
by stamping out the opposition while engaged in the process of constructing a new
society. This revolutionary procedure freed it from traditional limits on power.
By the time a new generation grew up, matured and prepared to take stock (a
development delayed by the World War and the cold war until the mid-fifties), a
situation had been created in which opponents to the policies of the present Soviet
executive face what might be called "the dilemma of the one alternative." Even
if rejecting the system in a personal sense, its critic is forced to admit that by
now no meaningful alternatives to it exist. That seems to this writer to have
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been the position of many Soviet students whom he met in the USSR in the fall of
1956. ?
The point of these remarks, which followed the admission of a broad
pattern of continuity in the autocratic character of the Russian executive, was to
suggest that nonetheless a sharp distinction in the roles played by the Tsarist and
the Soviet executives must be noted. The distinction is inherent in the apparent
difference between an autocratic regime based on certain traditional values and
generally committed to the status quo, and an autocratic regime which is revo-
lutionary in its policy and is committed ideologically to a radical destruction of the
past. Regimes such as the latter have been called totalitarian and it is this
totalitarian development within the broad autocratic pattern which presents us with
a sharp discontinuity in the role and character of the Russian executive between
1861 and 1957.
0
III
A further question now arises. After all, if we were to compare the
British government of today with the British government of 1861 we would note
-
certain very important differences within the constitutional pattern which could
-
lead us to the conclusion that a sharp discontinuity is involved. The change from
?
a parliamentary form of government to one which is fundamentally a centralized
party form of government might be considered as a sharp discontinuity even though
occuring within the constitutional pattern. Continuity and change, however, are
in constant interaction, and the British form of government as it exists today
evolved out of-yesterday's. The change took place gradually even though the
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At
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product at the end. is quite different from what it was at the beginning. The
question which we must now raise is whether the totalitarian pattern of the present
Russian executive was implicit in the gradual changes occurring in the autocratic
Tsarist executive. If that is the case, then the totalitarian role of the Soviet exe-
cutive, though different in many respects from that of the Tsarist one, is yet the
natural child of trends implicit in the past.
To examine this proposition we must take a broad look at the confusing,
changing and multi-directional courses pursued by the antecedent power in Russia
and attempt to extract from them some indication of a general trend, meaningful
0
to our quest for patterns of fundamental continuity or proofs of an essential dis-
continuity. That the record of the Tsarist executive was mixed in so far as
liberalizing and reactionary policies are concerned is clear from a cursory glance
at Russian political history. Yet it also becomes evident that the second half of
the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth were periods of great
changes--and ones that we might call itspontaneous"--in the social and economic
life of Russia. Heavy industry, railroads, coal and iron complexes were budding
and the cities were featuring the growing opulence and power of a new class of -
bankers, merchants and industrialists. These changes, even if under the cloak
of a political power dusty with antiquated traditions of autocracy, were beginning
to make themselves felt. Violent radical conspiracies were their extreme ex-
pression. But much more important than these was the conscious striving of
many for reform, for a constitution, for a liberal monarchy. 28And this con-
sciousness penetrated even the cola walls of the Winter Palace and the Tsars
gradually found themselves surrounded by whispered, and sometimes loud warnings
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that something must be done.
To reform from within an old autocracy is not an easy task. Many vested
interests are always against change other than the natural, imperceptible one.
This proved to be so in Russia. Yet the executive power which, given the system,
-
was the only effective source of reform, did initiate a number of significant changes.
These reforms involved not only important areas of the social and economic life of
the community, such as the liberation of the peasant or the later Stolypin agri-
cultural reforms, but also political changes which had direct bearing on the power
of the executive. The law reform and the organization of jury trial (1864), while
29
still subject to severe limitations in statute and practice, meant that the judicial
branch was gradually becoming institutionalized--a matter not irrelevent to the
role of the executive. The law on assemblies, passed in the same year, similarly
implied a modest development in the direction of regularized patterns of self-
government, albeit on very limited scale. The press reforms of 1865, the growing
vocal activity of the zemstvos, and Loris -Melikov's projects were all efforts to
bring the autocracy in line with the requirements of the changing society, to bridge
the gap between political institutions designed to fight off the Tartar yoke, and to
build a society which was now beginning to feel more strongly the impact of growing
pains in the age of the economic and social revolution. The dilemma of power in
0
such a context - to liberalize or to contain - meant frequent oscillations and re-
versals. And yet, even though the executive would shrink back into the apparently
only safe refuge of reaction (e.g. , 1882), the society itself would continue its
pressures for change and the executive would finally respond. But the ambivalence
would persist: the Duma period, the desire for a buffer between society and the
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executive (as explicitly stated by Witte), the electoral reforms, would be followed
by a relapse, by electoral amendments designed to limit representation by a re-
30
emphasis of Tsarist autocracy, by a reassertion of violence. Nonetheless, a
residue of change would remain and would serve as a springboard for further in-
tensification in the pressures for reform. The development of the Prime
,Ministership31- and the embryonic growth of a multi-party system were part of in-
stitutional changes which even subsequent relapse into reaction could not undo in
their entirety. That the change was slow, too slow, seems to have been the final
verdict of history, and the regime did not surmount the accumulated pressures when
they came to be combined with external blows. These considerations, nonetheless,
lead one to suggest that the role played by the Soviet executive, given its policies
and power, involves a reversal in an admittedly timid and regrettably blurred trend.
In the process of carrying out the communist revolution, the successor
government expanded its powers to an unprecedented degree in modern political
history, it reversed the trends toward an independent judiciary, towards a freer
peasantry, towards a modest system of political representation based on a plural-
istic society. Much of the violence used to build the new communist society was
a product of the need to overcome the resistance of inertia which is the usual social
response to rapid, purposeful and ideologically motivated change pushed forward
by an organized-minority. Much of it was a product of brutal zeal and a lust for
power. But one must remember also that the terror used by the Tsarist regime
against the revolutionaries in itself contributed to the sharpening of their dogmatic
convictions and strengthened their belief in the necessity of violence for the sake
of "morally" good ends. This psychological legacy of Tsardom makes the rulers
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of the past share responsibility with the rulers of the present for the continued re-
liance on violence despite the deep existential and normative differences between
the Soviet and Tsarist executives.
Recently there have been some indications that with a decline in the momentum
of internal transformation, voices might be raised inside Russia to dispute the un-
limited claim of the executive to rule over the destinies of the Russian people.
But the occasional voices of non-conformity are still timid when compared to the
literary outcries of the disaffected intellectuals or the heroic declarations of the
revolutionary brethren of less than a century ago. The Tsarist executive was very
gradually, indeed haltingly, moving in the direction of closing the gap between the
political regime and the society at large by adjusting to the requirements of the
society. It moved too slowly. The Soviet leadership changed society in the image
of its own doctrines so that no such gap should exist. The 1957 reforms in the
Soviet administrative structure, allegedly granting more say to component federal
and economic units, could have been significant in altering the role of the executive
and its relationship to society. 32But unlike Tsardom, there is always the parallel
and the pervading structure of the party, and all indications point to the fact that
the party is as powerful as ever. At this moment it would seem idle to speculate
on the durability of the Soviet executive's unlimited power and we might be well
advised to leave the task to the Arden House Conference of April 2,058. A
_
political scientist, when glancing into history, must not forget that there are too
many crossroads in the paths pursued by politiciams to permit the use of the past
as a compass to the future.
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FOOTNOTES TO BRZEZINSKI
1. More will be said later about the implications and nature of the Duma period
just prior to World War I. It is not possible, in this brief space, to present
both a detailed institutional account of the roles played by the Tsarist and
Soviet executives and a meaningful analysis of their continuities and discon-
tinuities. The paper will concentrate on the latter, and merely point to
certain relevant institutional aspects.
2. In the late nineteenth century the Committee of Ministers was composed of the
following: War and Navy, Finance, Interior, Communications, State Domains,
Education, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Control. The Ministry of the Interior
was probably the most important ministry for domestic matters, directing not
only the state bureaucracy but, in a sense, setting the broad patterns of
domestic policy. II; frequently competed for power and prestige with the
Finance Ministry which shaped the fiscal policy. Budgetary provisions for the
respective ministries suggest their relative weights (except with respect to the
Foreign Ministry, the importance of which was less dependent on the vastness
of its bureaucratic apparatus). Thus, for instance, in 1887, the expenditures
of the Ministry of War and Navy was 251 mill. rubles, Finance: 109, Interior
73, Communications: 26, State Domains: 23, Education: 21, Justice: 20,
Foreign Affairs: 5, Control: 3. (See C. Skalkovsky, Les Ministres des
Finances de la Russie (Paris, 1891), p. 292.) In the case of the War Ministry,
many of the expenditures were for the purpose of constructing strategically
important railroads which were otherwise fiscally non-profitable.
3. Iz moievo p.roshlago (Paris, 1933), vol. II, p. 153; Out of My Past (London,
1935).
4. The Council of the Empire, composed in the mid-eighties of 64 members, was
a consultative body for legislative matters. The members, appointed by the
Tsar, were usually members of the Imperial family, former and present
ministers, and distinguished servants of the Tsar. The Senate, likewise com-
posed of appointed dignitaries, was to be the highest judicial body, a court of
cassation, and the supreme body for adjudicating administrative conflicts. One
of its seven departments handled also governmental auditing. The Holy Synod,
headed by a lay Procurator General and composed of the metropolitans and
bishops, dealt with religious matters as well as problems of general state
morality, etc.
5. For excellent descriptions of some of the leading figures in the court life of
late nineteenth century Russia, see the diaries of such dignitaries as A. A.
Polovtsev, E. A. Peretz, K. Golovin or P. A. Valuiev.
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6. For instance, the texts of the Tsarina's letters to the Tsar while he was at the
front, F. R. Golder, Documents of Russian History (New York, 1927).
7. Memoires Politiques, Correspondance, etc. (Paris, 1927).
8. Note Khrushchev's sarcastic remark in his secret speech, referring to
Poskrebyshev as Stalin's "loyal shield-bearer."
9. It is interesting to reflect that Pobedonostsev's insistence on a rigid system
based on laws strongly suggests that his ideal would have been the Platonic
society - with its reliance on state religion, family training, indoctrination of
the intellectual, all within a firm legal framework. These were precisely the
things that Pobedonostsev was actually advocating and, in some measure, im-
plementing. However, judging by his criticisms of the idea of a search for
Truth, one might speculate that the Laws, rather than the Republic, would
have been more to his liking. For some discussions of his views see A. A.
Kornilov, Kurs istorii Rossii XIX veka (Moscow, 1918), III, p. 269, and
R. F. Byrnes, "Pobedonostsev on the Instruments of Russian Government",
in Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, ed. E. J. Simmons,
(Cambridge, Mass., 1955).
10. A recent example was the appointment of the relatively unknown Party
functionary, I. I. Kuzmin, to head the Gosplan.
11. A good source is I. Blinov, Gubernatory: istoriko-iuridicheski ocherk (St.
Petersburg, 1905).
12. The check supposedly provided by the local procurator, subordinated to the
Ministry of Justice, unfortunately frequently proved illusory as the governor
normally wielded more influence back in St. Petersburg. (Cf. N. Flerovsky,
Tri Politicheskiia Sistemy, 1897, no place, pp. 54-55). Another check in-
volved the periodic inspections by delegated senators. In a sense, they per-
formed the functions of control somewhat like the Party control commissions
or RKI. But again, personal factors were of critical importance.
13. Marc Raeff, in his "The Russian Autocracy and Its Officials", part of
Russian Thought and Politics (Cambridge, 1957), p. 80, mentions the example
of a somewhat earlier provincial governor whose routine included signing 270
papers daily, or about 100, 000 a year. Recent So.viet discussions of bureau-
cratic difficulties suggest a striking continuity in this reliance on written and
signed instructions: one regional agricultural administration reported that
during 1953 it received from the Ministry of Agriculture no less than 7, 569
letters; in 1954, 8,459, and on the average about 30 instructions per day.
(Partiinaia zhizn, No. 3 (1955), 60-61.) Russian literature and more recently
even some Soviet, gives us brilliant descriptions of crushed bureaucrats, fear-
ful of inspections, giving their all to the daily dose of instructions, requests,
statistics, etc. See also Krokodil for cartoon treatment, and Khrushchev's
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1957 speeches on decentralization. For an interesting and informative account
of bureaucratic vicissitude 4 under the Tsarist regime see the recollections of
Flerovsky, op. cit., esp. pp. 19-136. In them he describes his initial career
as a civil servant of the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg, the internal
intrigues and nepotism, the lack of expertise of some of the higher functionaries,
and the rather wide-spread disregard for established laws and rights on the part
of higher and also lower officials.
14. According to the 1897 census, the Gendarme Corps numbered 800 officers and
50,000 men, the police force 104, 500 men, and an unknown number of Okhrana
functionaries and collaborators. This should be compared to the 435, 000 public
officials in the same period. G. Alexinsky, Modern Russia (London, 1913),
pp. 178, 182, 186.
15. S. Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers, and Trials under the Last Three Tsars
(New York, 1953), p. 201-203.
16. The Russian criminal code was quite liberal in defining anti-state activities,
and even more generous in assigning the death penalty for them. The death
penalty was provided for any actions or conspiracies which would endanger the
"life, liberty or health" of the Tsar, or would "limit" the powers of the throne
(arts. 99, 101). The death penalty was furthermore provided for anyone
plotting to change the Russian government, or to change it in any part of Russia,
or for anyone plotting to separate any part of Russia from the Russian state
(art. 100). The death penalty was again provided for anyone who made an at-
tempt on the life of a member of the Imperial Household (art. 105). Further-
more "armed resistance to authority or attacks on army or police officials
and on all official functionaries in the execution of their assigned duties" would
be punished-by the death penalty "if these crimes are accompanied by murder,
or attempted murder, infliction of wounds, grevious assault, or arson" (see
M. I. Gernet, Smertnaia kazn (Moscow, 1913), p. 54. Other offences, punish-
able by death, are also enumerated). For various statistics on the frequency
of the death penalty, see Kucherov, op. cit., Alexinsky, op. cit., Gernet,
op. cit., S. Usherovich, Smertnie kazni v tsarskoi Rossii (Kharkov, 1933),
etc. These sources also include accounts of mistreatment and flogging of
political prisoners.
17. For reference to the Zasulich case, see part. II. The judges were subordinated
administratively to the Minister of Justice. Flerovsky, a civil servant in the
Ministry, cites cases of the overbearing treatment of the judges by the Minister,
op. cit. , p. 65.
18. A. T. Vassilyev, The Ochrana, (Philadelphia, 1930), p. 39. See also N. N.
Beliavsky, _Politseiskoe pravo (Petrograd, 1915) and A. I. Elistratov,
Uchebnik russkayo administrativnayo prava (Moscow, 1910). Vassilyev, quoted
above, was not entirely correct for under emergency circumstances captured
revolutionaries were frequently executed on orders of the provincial governors
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who based themselves on articles 17 and 18 of the Special Law for the
Preservation of Order.
19. P. L. Lavrov observed in 1870: "Law in Russian eyes- never stood on the level
of 'written reason', never became sacred just because it was law. Law was
regulation convenient to the momentary whim of the government." Philosophy
of the History of Slays, quoted in J. Kucharzewski, Od Bialego Caratu do
Czerwonego (Warsaw, 1931), vol. 5, p. 53. See P. Milyoukov, Russia and Its
Crisis (Chicago, 1905), esp. pp. 165-185, for a general analysis of the weak-
ness of the legal tradition. The failure of the Senate, which was meant to be
the watchdog of laws, is illustrative. Filled with retired administrators and
even former police functionaries it never fulfilled its role and became a mouth-
piece for the executive. See Flerovsky, op. cit. , p. 62,. for some specific
_
instances.
20. See the forthcoming study of these archives by Merle Fainsod (Harvard
University Press, 1958).
21. A. Vishinsky, The Theory of Evidence in the Soviet Law (Moscow, 1941), p. 31.
22. Of course, there have been plots among younger officers, impatient with the
Tsarist policy of status quo; e. g., the Voiennaia Organizatsiia Partii Narodnoi
Volii. The officers, however, were all of junior rank and this made it quite
impossible to use the ai'my as a unit for political purposes. These traditional
considerations, apart from the more immediately significant factor of highly
institutionalized controls and intense indoctrination, might have also been taken
into account by those who for the last few years made a profession out of pre-
dicting an imminent take-over of political power in the USSR by the military.
23. One might also consider a supernatural restraint in the sense of a transcendent
moral order to which many governments pay lip service. In fact, however,
its political significance is probably covered fully by the three outlined above,
and particularly by the first two. For a full discussion of the role of these
restraints and their implication see the author's "Totalitarianism and
Rationality", The American Political Science Review, September, 1956.
24. For comparative treatments of the censorship systems, see M. Karpovich,
"Historical Background of Soviet Thought Control", in W. Gurian, The Soviet
Union: A Symposium (Notre Dame, 1951); Merle Fainsod, "Censorship in the
USSR; "A Documented Record", Problems of Communism (March-April, 1956),
and Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass. , 1950).
25. For detailed treatment of the conspiratorial activity see A. P. Mentshchikov,
Ok.hrana i Revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1925-1932), and A. Kornilov, Obshchestvennoe
dvizhenie pri Aleksandre II (Paris, 1905). Count Pahlen reported to Alexander
II that the chief reason for the success of revolutionary propaganda was the sym-
pathy that existed for it among large parts of the population, op. cit., p. 160.
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26. Pisma Pobedonostseva k Aleksandra III (Moscow, 1925-1926), vol. I, pp. 318-
319.
27. Compare I. Berlin's "The Silence in Russian Culture", Foreign Affairs
(October, 1957), with the following account of a meeting of young Russian revo-
lutionaries in the eve of New Year's 1880, when arrests were already auguring
not too a happy future for them: "The preparation of the punch left a particularly
plastic image in my memory. On a round table in the middle of the room a vase
was placed, filled with Pieces of sugar, lemon, roots, sprinkled with arac and
wine. It was a magic sight when the arac was fired and the candles extinguished.
The flickering flame, mounting and. waning, lighted the severe faces of the men
surrounding it; Kolodkevich and Zhelyabov stood closest Morozov took out
his stiletto, then another, then another, placed them, crossed, on the vase and,
without preparation, with a sudden impetus, the powerful, solemn melody of
the known hajdamak song was heard: 'Hai, ne dyvuites, dobryie ludi, shcho na
Ukrainie povstaniiet. The sounds of the song spread and mounted, they were
joined by fresh voices, and the shimmering flame flickered, bursting out with
a red glow, as if steeling the weapons for struggle and death..." Olga
Lubatovich, Byloe (June, 1906), pp. 123-4, quoted in Kucharzewski, op. cit.,
vol. 5, pp. 304-5.
28. For an interesting recent analysis see George Fischer's Russian Liberalism
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957).
29. See Kucherov, op. cit., or Alexinsky, op. cit. The latter comments: "To be
elected a juror, a man must be a landowner. The composition of the jury was
subject to the control of the bureaucracy. The nobles continued to elect the
justices of the peace. Preliminary examinations fell almost exclusively to the
charge of die police." pp. 193 ff.
30. See S. L. Levitsky, "Legislative Initiative in the Russian Duma", The American
Slavonic and East European Review, XV (October, 1956), 315-24; also S. A.
Piontkovskii, Ocherki istoii SSSR XIX i XX veka (Moscow, 1935), for a dis-
cussion of the electoral system.
31. The October, 1905, reform formally set up a Council of Ministers with a
Minister President, both modeled on the western pattern.
32. In the reorganization, 105 economic administrative regions were set up, each
headed by a sovnarkhoz, directed by a chairman who might be given ministerial
rank and who is subordinate to the Union Republic Council of Ministers. As of
December, 14 All-Union Ministries and 15 Union-Republican Ministries were
abolished and their enterprises transferred to pertinent Sovnarkhozy. The
central Gosplan Committee was charged with drawing overall plans and its
sections coordinate the various economic branches. Its head is a Deputy
Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. The Council is now composed of
a Chairman, 4 Deputy Chairmen, 7 All-Union Ministers, 13 Union-Republican
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Footnotes to Brzezinski
Ministries, and 9 Chairmen of State Committees. There are ow no 1st
Deputy Chairmen. The die!appearance of the former practice of se rat
First Deputy Chairmen servins with the Chairmen as a sort of inner
cabinet superior to the mass ti * Deputy Chairmen and Ministers, strengthe
the impression that the Party Pzesidium, composed predominantly of
apparatchiki, is the sole policy-making body. It is still too early to judge
what the relationship will be between the vo rious Sovnarkhozy and Obkomy.
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STAT
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THE STATE AND THE LOCAL COMMUNITY
by
Alexander Vucinich
The-"epoch of great reforms" in Russia during-the sixties of the last
century proauced the "village community," the township (volost), and the zemstvo.
These three-units were local political communities: all had at their command the
necessary administrative agencies to perform specified functions of local import.
The reforms of the 1860's did not produce the municipality as a political-
administrative unit; credit for this deed goes to Peter the Great and Catherine II.
Howeve:, a new statute on cities, passed on June 16, 1870, liberalized the election
of city councilors and expanded the administrative competence of local municipal
authorities.
To fully understand the place of these four local communities in Russia's
political system it is imperative t show the internal organization of their elected
and administrative agencies, to indicate tbe. institutional mechanisms which linked
them with the central state authorities, and to point out the basic trends in their
relationship to the state.
When on the 20th of November, 1857, the government announced its in-
tention to abolish the feudal system, one of the most vital and complex problems
it faced was the blueprinting of new rural communities and of their relations with
the central authorities. Both of these demanding tasks were thrown into the lap
of an administrative section of the commission entrusted with drafting the General ,
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Statute on Peasants. The members of this section were in agreement from the out-
set that the 13...sic tasks confronting-them were the creation of uniform types of
local communities, the definition of the political and administrative attributes of
_
these communities, and the specification of their ties with the central state ma-
chinery.
In .searching for a precise definition of the primary rural community the
members of the administrative section endorsed unanimously the proposal of the
Ministry of the Internal Affairs that (1) the new village units be so organized as to
ensure "the i-e-placement of the former irresponsible police authority and the ir-
responsible landlord courts by an appropriate police and judiciary-police organi-
zation of the peasants," and (2) necessary institutional devices be introduced to
safeguard "the general peace and order. "1 A synchronization of these two tasks
was the key problem with which the administrative section was faced: The first
task was tantamount to laying the foundations for an autonomous status of the rural
community vis--a-vis the central political authorities. The second task was of
opposite cast: - it was directed, above everything else, toward the preservation of
the autocratic regime. The prodigious assignment which the members of the
section faced was how to grant a modicum of self-government to local rural corn-
munities without abrogating any attributes of monarchical absolutism.
:
_
No wonder then that from the outset they subscribed to the idea of two types=
A, A
:
of rural political communities: one to handle the purely local "cultural" and ?
"economic" problems, and therefore not to be formally linked with-the,government
and the second to function as a police and administrative.-Ainit ccinnected by formal
ties with the central government. The proposed dichotomy based-on-the-premise
? Se '
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that one type of community should be dedicated to local interests and the second to
the interests of the state. This dichotomy became the cornerstone of the General
Statute. At the beginning most members of the administrative section shared the
opinion that the land commune (pozemelinaia obshchina) and the village. community
(sell skoe obshchestvo) should be the units of the proposed dichotomy. 2However,
the final draft of the General Statute recognized the village community and the
township (volost) as the two primary rural communities.
The village community appeared in two general forms: in the areas in which
communal agriculture (through the existence of the obshchina) was predominant a
village community was more often than not coterminous with the traditional commune.
Thus the peasants who previously were subordinated to a single landlord were
likely to form a peasant community. This phenomenon was a result of the philoso-
phy of-gradualism which dominated the thinking of the architects of the General
Statute. The second type of village community consisted of rural households which
were not previously organized on a communal basis although they were involved in
feudal relations. Each type of community was bolted together by the feudal insti-
tution of "collective responsibility" (krugovaia poruka): the entire community was
held legally responsible for the failure of a single person to meet his obligations
to various state authorities. In communities based on the communal principle the
krugovaia poruka was extended to include the obligations to the former landlord.
The peasants, individually or collectively, had no legal right to leave their corn-
munity before they completed their land payments.
The General Statute granted the peasant a series of rights. For the first
time he could enter into all sorts of contractual relations and runliie family affair
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independently of the.landlord, who was also divested-of his traditional responsibility
far the collection of peasant taxes and for the meeting of military obligations by the
rural populace. However, the landlord had retained a number of traditional prero-
gatives and, as a substitute for his "lost" land, he acquired certain new power at-
tributes. He continued to play the role d guardian in all court proceedings whether
1
or not the peasants desired his services. New police functions of village authori-
ties were placed under his direct control.
The new village community did not signify a full termination of feudal insti-
tutions and practices. The peasants' annual payments (obrok) and services
(barshchina) to their former landlords were preserved as a form of payments for
land. The "installment" system of redemption payments made it practical for the
-government to retain the krugovaia poruka. On the otherhand, the landlords' loss
of such important responsibilities as the supervision over the tax payments and
military obligations by the peasants created an administrative vacurm in the country-
side. The newly _founded administrative agencies of the village community and the
township became-the legal heirs to the "state functions" previously performed by the
landlord. The big question was how to define the authority of the new-communities,
the-more so because at the time the emphasis on self-government gained wide cur-
rency among Many intellectuals and progressive landlords. The problem of local
autonomy versus centralized autocracy became a burning problem of Russia's in-
ternal politics during the remainder of the monarchic era.
All househOld heads of a village community made up the village assemi)ly
(sel'skii skhod), which in turn selected the elder, the tax-collector, an&a nuMber
of other officials._ The elder and the officials were responsible for-the asSeiSmeiit,
and collection of various taxes, maintenance of rural roads and bridges, .a.sSista.n.'ce
?
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to families impoverished by fire or natural accidents, and several obligations of
purely local significance.
The township consisted of two or more village communities including a ?
total of from 300 to 2, 000 male members, and with a maximum distance of eight
miles between individual villages. The General Statute defined the township as the
lowest administrative unit of peasant self-government, in contrast to the village
community which was defined as an "economic" unit. The organizational blueprint
of the township included three institutions: the township assembly (skhod), the
township headman with the administrative officials, and the township peasant court.
The township assembly consisted of all eletted village and township officials and
of additional peasants elected by each village community at a ratio of one delegate
per ten households. The law vested the assembly with limited authority in the
fields of local "economic" interests, public order, and local schools. Since an
appallingly high number of deputies were illiterate and totally unversed in admini-
strative intricacies these institutions made no appreciable contribution to the cause
of rural self-government. Experience had shown that there were no substantial
township properties, capital investments, or public undertakings to give the town-
ship assembly a vital place in the life of the rural population. Moreover, from the
very beginning most of tax, land, and public-work obligations were handled by
village assemblies.
The township headman and other administrative officials were obliged to
acquaint the mostly illiterate local population with the substance of relevant laws
,
and government decisions It was their duty also to search-f'o'r-,and. 'detain law
r ?? ,
-
violators and in general to maintain peace and order in their- re.-Spettive,are'ass--
.
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The township court, the third institutional component of township government, con-
sisted. of from four to twelve members elected by the township assembly. It settled
small debt conflicts among local peasants and punished individuals guilty of minor
misdemeanors.
The administrative-mechanisms of the village, community and the township
had no precedents in Russia: they were the first institutions which recognized the
peasant as a political quantity. The situation in municipalities was quite different.
Local- government of a special type existed in towns and cities since the early
eighteenth century. Peter the Great instituted various Landrats, urban guilds,
magistrates, and elective commissions in an effort to make up for the obvious in-
ability of centralized bureaucracy to cope effectively with the growing-demands of
3
both the state and the local community. These agencies were granted no effective
local autonomy and had no deep roots in the community. They became mere
bureaucratic appendages and an added burden to citizens. However, as the economic
and political life of the country grew more complex the contrast between local and
state demands became increasingly more pronounced. In 1785 Catherine II issued
the Statute on Cities which ruled that the members of "all" estates (with the ex-
ception of peasants, of course) take part in electing the deputies of city councils
(dumas). The latter were empowered to manage independently a sizable array of
local cultural and economic activities. G. Dzhanshiev, an eminent student of
_
Russia's social reforms, stated that none of the nineteenth-century city statutes
was "more progressive" than the one promulgated by Catherine II. 4 Although the
. ? ,
city duma became a permanent body, it did not achieve the autonomous status -.SPeci-
_
- ,
fied by the 1785 Statute. Within a very short time the duma authorities,becarrie,
? `. ? It
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fully subordinated to the government-appointed chief of local administration.
After prolonged preparations, the second Statute on Cities was made, public
on June 16, 1870. All city property-tax payers participated in the election of the
city duma councilors, who in turn elected an administrative board and a mayor.
Such local "economic" matters as construction and maintenance of public market
places, sanitary service, certain types of educational facilities, charity, and-fire
protection were under the jurisdiction of thi? body. During the 1870's the city duma
was introduced throughout Russia and in certain parts of Central Asia.
The most original and tangible contribution of the reform-oriented govern-
ment of the late 1850's and the 1860's to the political autonomy of the local community
was made through the Statute on Zemstvo. of January 1, 1864. The zemstvo insti-
tutions were among the principal forces in the reform period which transformed
Russia's social life along "completely new lines of citizenship. "5 The zemstvo'
were organized on district (uezd) and provincial (guberniia) levels, and their au-
thorities consisted of zemstvo assemblies and zemstvo administrations. The
district assemblies had from 10 to 96 deputies (glasnykh), who were elected by
three electoral groups (curiae) defined in terms of property holdings: the land-
holders, city property holders, and village communities. The district zemstvo
assemblies elected the provincial deputie? at a ratio of one delegate per six district
delegates. The district assemblies also elected the members of the district
zemstvo administration for a three-year term to perform specified administrative`,
functions. The zemstvo institutions were entrusted with such purely local
"economic and cultural" functions as the management of the rural means of cOrn-
_ ,
munication, mutual insurance, charity, and food stores. They-also fought ,cattle?,
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plague and natural causes of harvest failures, and were "in charge" of local
commerce and industry, public health, elementary education, and jails. 6In order
to finance their undertakings and to pay the salaries of their employees the zemstvo
were authorized to collect property taxes. The zemstvo agencies were introduced
g.radually; it took ten years after the passage of the 1864 Statute before they were
established in 33 provinces of European Russia. In Siberia, the Baltic areas, most
of Central Asia and the Caucasus they were never introduced lest any autonomy of
local communities might spur the growth of nationalism among non-Russian peoples.
II
The political-administrative agencies of the village community, the town-
ship, the city Cluma, and the zemstvo were the results not only of the rising
pressure for local self-government generated by the country's intellectuals of various
ideological orientations but also of a need to find working substitutes for the defunct
local administrative machinery of the feudal era which placed into the hands of
landed aristocracy extensive police, judiciary, and other functions. They were
also results of the determination of the top-level state authorities to "solve" the
problem of local self-government without surrendering any essential attributes
of monarchic absolutism.
The idea of local self-government was one of the most popular ideas of the
reform epoch. It was only the tradition-imbued high government bureaucrat who
was quick to discern its utter incompatibility with the monarchical order and to
condemn it outright. The champions of local self-government represented a strange
conglomeration of intellectual circles each of which bestowed all its blessing on
?
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local political autonomy and yet each defined it in its own terms. Out-of the ocean
of general intellectual confusion there emerged three dominant theories on self-
government which may be labeled the "communal theory," "the social theory, " and
the "state theor-y." The proponents of the communal theory--among whom the
.most vociferous were various anti-Westernization faction-s?were content with the
idea that the existence and perpetuation of land communes as corporate bodies were
synonymous with sound local self-government. Many proponents of this theory
identified the commune as both an indigenous Russian institution and a primordial--
that is, prefeudal--organization. They provided no serious challenge to the champions
of the autocratic regime; yet while the Slavophiles sought the perpetuation of the
commune as a bulwark in the struggle against Westernization, the spokesmen of
autocracy sought its survival to avoid undue complexities in the policy of gradual
dissolution of feudal institutions.
The social theory of local self-government was championed by a majority
of intellectual groups and by a solid core of state councilors. This theory was
,based.on the cardinal assumption that society, with its own demands and functions,
_
was independent ofthe- state, and that, therefore, the peculiarly "social" functions
should be carried out by special "social" agencies which must be outside the
bureaucratic- pyramid of the government and must enjoy appreciable autonomy in
7
the performance of their functions. This theory was obviously based on a false
dichotomy of sodiety and the state, and its official supporters were committed to
overlook the creation of any formal ties connecting the local political communities
with the trunk of the central government. The society-state dichotomy came to be
a part of the futile effort to blend two ideologically disparate parts of the Russian
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body politic: the romanticized democratism of the local rural community and self-
sanctified autocratism.
The state theory of local self-g-overnment revolved around the assumption
that there were no specifically local affairs, that so-called local affairs were
state affairs which were placed by the "will of the state" into the hands of the organs
of local self-government. The state authority, according?to the champions of this
theory, was one and indivisible and had two arms: the units of the bureaucratic
pyramid and the-institutions of local self-government. During the late 1850's and
early 1860's the state theory was still in an embryonic form; it did not receive full
theoretical treatment before the last two decades of the century. 8
The four local communities as finally blueprinted by their respective
statutes were predominantly the results of the ideas and designs set forth by the
proponents of the social theory. The representative and administrative bodies of
0
these communities became known as "social institutions. " Their architects did
realize, however, that an unqualified application of pure social tReory would lead
to a polarization of the two types of authority between which no formal links would
eicist. Therefore, the law-makers were compelled to define for all four communities
not only their self-governing mechanisms and jurisdiction,' but also what amounted
to government control over the local elected bodies. The legal acts which paved
the way for the establishment of the four communities were based on the premise
that the difference between "state" functions and "social" functions was the difference
between important and unimportant functions as these were defined by the state.
In practice, the autocratic government did not surrender any of its functions, it
merely authorized the local "self-governing" authorities to perform the tasks with
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which the state was not traditionally concerned. ? -Of course, as some of the "social"
.functions grew... in complexity- and importance -the-central:government was ready to
redefine them as "state" functions and place them under its jurisdiction.
It is obvious that from the outset the local communities were politically sub-
ordinated to the state authorities in two ways: their authority was limited to the
powers delegated to them by nonelective central authorities, and they were subjected
to strict control by government bureaucracy. The elected authorities of the village
community and the township were obliged by law to carry out all tasks assigned to
them_by numerous government bureaucrats including the ubiquitous p?Olice and court
?
investigators. The village and township authorities were also dominated by a
special government official, the arbitrator, who was appointed by the governors
upon recommendation by the local gentry. His original function was to prepare so-
called basic documents, which specified size and location of land acquired by the
peasants and thei-r financial and other obligations to the former owners. From the
beginning, however, the arbitrator commanded enough authority to annul any de-
cisions by local authorities which he considered illegal, to discharge or even ar-
rest elected officials, and to give formal approval or disapproval of local deputies.
Municipal self-government was subject to similar limitations. The mayors
a
of larger cities needed official approval by the Minister of the Interior and those
? -
of smaller municipalities by the provincial governor before they could officially
begin their public_service. Zemstvo self-government--widely extolled as the
highest form of local political autonomy achieved under the monarchical regime--
was also subject to control by the bureaucratic apparatus, although this control
was not explicitly stated in the Statute of 1864., The latter document, however,
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did rule (through Article 108) that the zemstvo institutions should direct their ac-
tivities in accordance with the regulations provided for by special laws. These
laws regulated the stupendous "obligations" of rural communities to the state, the
-
??????????????1?211Mo
methods of rural communication, public construction projects, distribution of
provisions, mutual insurance, charity, and the assessment and collection of taxes.
The zemstvo authorities were hamstrung by outside regulations establishing most
of the substance and procedure of their "self-government." It is also noteworthy
that most of these regulations came into existence before the establishment of the
zemstvo and even before the enactment of the General Statute. Thus zemstvo
agencies were expected to conduct their affairs in accordance with legal measures
which came into force in the pre-reform days and were totally alien to the idea of
local self-government. 10
There isanother element which occupied an important part in the network
of relationships Which linked the local community with the state and which throws
significant light on the political-administrative status of the local community within
the Russian polity. In addition to the assignments of local importance, labeled as
"social" rather than "political" assignments, the local communities performed
many functions of "state significance" which were subsumed under the general
category of "obligations to the state." The "state functions" bestowed no rights
or prerogatives on the local communities and their representative bodies; they
simply imposed on them burdensome duties. At the end of the 1870's, for example,
9
the municipal government of Moscow disbursed 37 per cent of its budget for the
needs of the army, police, gendarmerie, and similar institutions which were sub-
ordinated to the centralgovernment and over which the city fathers had no jurisdiction.
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The case of the zemstvo is particularly instructive in this regard. In 1899
the -government issued a voluminous Charter which stipulated the "obligations" of
rural communities to the state. In the regions where zemstvo were in-existence
they were the chief carriers of these burdens. In 1906 and 1907 additional burdens
were added as the old ones tended to perpetuate themselves. The zemstvo obli-
gations-to the state were divided into "cash obligations" and "goods and services
obligations." The former were earmarked for the maintenance and construction of
roads; the needs of civil administration (such as the post office); direct donations to
the state treasury; local economy, welfare, and improvements; and military needs.
Later on the zemstvo were obliged to finance the building of detention stations for
convicts transported from one place to another, and in the Western regions to pay
the salaries of local priests. The goods and services obligations were equally
extensive. 11Zemstvo administrations were expected to organize the local populace
for mandatory work on. roads; to supply horses for local policing and mail-
distributing purposes, and for the transportation of official persons; and to provide
living quarters for certain police and other officials.
Another important feature of the newly established local communities,
which influenced their relationship with the central agencies of the state, was the
peculiar class composition of their elected and administrative bodies. In the
elections of the deputies of the various assemblies the social category of "estate"
(soslovie) was the key element. The estates were neither "social classes" nor
IIc,astes. " They were social strata that were more dynamic--and more susceptible
to vertical mobility?than castes, yet they were more rigid and subject to appreci-
ably less mobility than social classes. Estates were defined by law and legal
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customs and were peculiar to the feudal social regime. The fathers of the great
reforms of the 1860's recognized that the abolition of serfdom and the attendant
creation of new local communities as political-administrative entities necessitated
a modification of differential legal and political rights and duties based on the estate
principle. T-he problem of estate stratification was of prime significance in the
preparation of laws for the regulation of procedures for the election of deputies of
the assemblies of local communities.
At the same time when the idea of equal citizenship was alien (in Russia
hardly more than in most of Europe) the proposals for electoral procedures could
follow one of three paths: they could be based on an "estate," an "all-estate," or
a "non-estate" principle. These principles were widely discussed, officially and
academically, although quite often without clear differentiation. The "estate"
principle stood for the participation of a single estate in the election of the delegates
of local assemblies. The "all-estate" principle denoted the participation of all
estates qua estates in election, that is, each estate participated as a separate and
distinguishable entity. The "non-estate" principle stood for the substitution of a
class principle for an estate principle in the designation of groups which voted as
separate units. This principle replaced the hereditary status by the type, size
and value of-propexty holdings as the official criterion for the division of population
into voting groups.
_
Of the four communities under discussion, the village communities and
townships elected their representatives on an estate principle; they were defined
as purely peasant bodies and only the peasants were allowed to participate in the
elections. The official reasoning behind the estate nature of the assemblies of
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these two communities was quite obvious: through the estate unity of peasantry the
government expected to prolong-the existence of the obshchina as the most potent
guaranty for the fulfillment of the financial and other obligations of the peasants to
their former landlords. Through the estate unity of the township the government
expected to enhance both its control over the rural community and the fulfillment of
peasant obligations to the state.
The deputies of city councils and zemstvo assemblies were elected on the
basis of the "non-estate" or property-class principle. In the cities the voters were
divided into three groups, each entitled to one-third of the total number of deputies.
The first group consisted of the comparatively small segment of large property
owners who paid in aggregate one-third of city taxes. At. thebottom was the bulk
of city populace who jointly paid as much taxes as the few members of the top group.
Similar procedures were applied in the elections of zemstvo delegates. The
members of district zemstvo assemblies were elected by persons who acquired
the right to vote by virtue of owning a legally defined minimum ("census") of
property. The voters were grouped into three electoral aggregates (curiae): the
owners of agricultural land, the owners of real estate in urban communities, and
the members of village communities. 12The first two groups elected their delegates
by direct vote, while the members of village communities elected a group of
"electors" (at a ratio of one elector per each 300 households), who in turn selected
the requisite number of zemstvo delegates. The intent of the-lkw-maker to abate
the deeply rooted estate bias in the election of district zemstvo delegates did not
materialize.; Although the electoral curia of landowners included not only the
former feudal landlords who retained substantial property but also small peasants,
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the latter, with few exceptions, played no independent role within their voting
group. In cases when they did win decisive victories, it was not difficult to dis-
cover formal "irregularities" and proclaim the elections invalid, or to secure the
victory for the gentry through administrative influences on the "muzhiks. "13
That the zemstvo assemblies were not based on a principle of proportional
representation of the social groups of individual districts was obvious. Moreover,
the two strongest groups--the landed gentry and the peasants--formed a strange
constellation of forces separated by inequality inherent in the estate system. An
authoritative source puts it this way: "The difference between non-aristocratic
and aristocratic eitates wa.s preserved in full force. In zemstvo assem.blies there
met two groups of people with totally different political and civil rights. Totally
different also were the economic positions of these groups. The foundations of
feudalism, despite some external changes, continued to live after 1861 in a new
style. "14
The zemstvo as a resounding myth differed qualitatively from the zemstvo
as a cold reality. As a myth it epitomized the highest achievement of "the epoch
of great reforms" for it stood for two novel principles of progressivism: local
self-government and non-estate representation. In cold reality its self-government
had but little substance and its representative character hardly took a step away
from the system of feudal estates. It was mostly as a myth--at least in the
beginning--that the zemstvo acquired a strange conglomeration of ideologically
disparate supporters. In the words of Prince D. Shakhovskoi: "Hundreds of
persons with sharply developed individualities took part in zemstvo work, and here
we met the adherents of the total spectrum of political allegiances, from extreme
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Westerners to-typical Slavophiles, from resolute radicals to stubborn upholders of
the existing order, and from consistent democrats to lukewarm defenders of the
estate principle. "15
To ask what happened to the zemstvo institutions during-the remaining days
of monarchical absolutism amounts substantially to asking what happened to the
relationship between the Russian state and the Russian local community in general.
The growth of zemstvo institutions was paradoxical. On the one hand, a long series
of government orders, laws, and statutes combined to curb any appreciable develop-
ment of local self-government and even abrogated most of the original guarantees
of administrative autonomy. On the other hand, the zemstvo acquired a remark-
able degree of stubborness and vitality and became a rallying point for movements
directed agairist rigid centralism, and dedicated to a general amelioration of social
and economic conditions.
While_ the 1864 Statute entrusted the zemstvo instItutions with a consider-
able area of activity it also curbed their authority by vesting the provincial
governors with what amounted to a veto power over the decisions of zemstvo au-
thorities. The weakest original feature of zemstvo self-government., however,
came from its institutional inability to command an adequate executive staff and
to have its lower echelons operating on the township level. The zemstvo insti-
tutions were granted a considerable area of activity but little genuine authority.
For the execution of many of their decisions they were .dependent on the assistance,
and whims, of local government authorities. The government's attitude toward the
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zemstvo was generally negative; the 'government officials viewed zemstvo agencies
"not as organic elements of the system of our local administration," but as "an
indidental appendage which was tolerated but not desired, and without which local
administration could exist and function. "16
During the first two decades of the ex-istence of zemstvo the central govern-
ment was concerned primarily with the enactment of measures limiting the work of
zemstvo institutions. On November 21, 1866, the government imposed drastic
limitations on the right of zemstvo assemblies to tax commercial and industrial
enterprises. On May 4, 1867, an official act ruled that it was illegal for zemstvo
of different provinces to maintain any kind of formal relations among themselves.
On June 13, 1867, the government granted more power to chairmen of zemstvo ad-
ministrations (usually persons favored by provincial governors) at the expense of
zemstvo assemblies. At the same time it was decided that all zemstvo publications
be subject to censorship by provincial authorities. The act of September 19, 1869,
ruled that zemstvo must pay postage for all their correspondence because "neither
by their composition nor by their basic principles are zemstvo government agencies,
and therefore they have no other legal rights than private persons and societies.... "17
The Statute on Schools of May 25, 1874, imposed wide limitations on the domain of
participation of zemstvo in the supervision of teaching and the right of zemstvo to
select the members of district school boards. The government decision of August
19, 1879, authorized the provincial governors to supervise the transfer and ap-
pointment of zerntvo employees. The crowning assault on self-government came
with the enactment of the 1890 Statute on Zemstvo. Unlike the document of 1864,
this Statute made no reference to "self-government" as an attribute of the zemstvo
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organization. It ruled that without the governor's approval no person could be either
a deputy of the zemstvo assembly or a member of the administrative board. The
governor was also vested with authority to annul the decisions of zemstvo assemblies
not only in-cases where they were incompatible with existing laws but also where
-
they were regarded as "unsuitable." The nature of zemstvo representation was
also changed; the new Statute replaced the "class" principle by the "all-estate"
principle in the selection of deputies. The three electoral groups now included the
landed gentry, the townfolk, and the peasants respectively. The 1864 Statute ensured
the landed gentry of a relative majority in zemstvo assemblies; the 1890 document
gave them an absolute majority. In a very few zemstvo--known as "peasants'
zemstvo"--did the peasant command a majority of votes. 18
It should be emphasized that by this time the estates had begun to break up
into heterogeneous subgroups with distinct styles of life and unequal wealth. The
gentry consisted of a small group of land magnates and a large group of small-
,-
town aristocracy who were increasingly forced to seek employment in various pro-
fessions. These two groups did not have common estate interests of any substance. -
The estate of townfolk consisted of an even more diversified group including
merchants,-city owners of real estate, industrialists, and larger or smaller non-
aristocratic landholders. The peasantry, despite its superficial homogeneity, had
already begun to show signs of economic inequality: the terms "working peasants"
and "agricultural proletariat" came into existence. 19
For these reasons the all-
estate principle of the new Statute did not produce the officially expected alignment
of social forces. The aristocracy had produced a segment of progressives who
were dedicated to the zemstvo and their principles of self-government. In general,
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the electoral procedures stipulated by the 1890 Statute did not seriously impair
the zemstvo gains during the p-rececling- decades,-
De-spite the obvious anti-zemstvo orientation of the central _government, the
zemstvo institutions became a social force of great and diverse significance. Their
work in education, sanitation, construction of roads, veterinary service, mutual
insurance, and public charity assumed unprecedented proportions. Much of this
work was carried by the so-called third element, the army of zemstvo employees.
In 1912 it was estimated that there were 85, 000 members of the "third element"
in 40 provinces which had zemstvo organizations. For each elected zemstvo official
there were fifty appointed employees. 20These people were officials of a new cast.
The government employee represented thetstate, was subordinated only to higher
echelons in the bureaucratic pyramid, and rulcd even though he may have been at
the bottom of the administrative machinery. The zemstvo employee had no authority
and was was dependent upon the local electorate. He became an antidote to-gpvernment
bureaucracy, and was to a remarkable degree responsible for the fact that the
term "bureaucracy" acquired a generally negative meaning. A famous encyclopedic
dictionary, published in St. Petersburg in 1895, summed up the prevalent views
on government bureaucracy by identifying it as a term denoting a method of ad-
ministration peculiar to political communities in which "the central government
authorities have concentrated all power in their hands," and in which there exists
a "privileged Segrient" of officials who display "caste exclusiveness" and are
?
"poor members of communities" because of their full identification not with the
society which they serve but with the authorities who employ them. 2_1
Through the "third element" the zemstvaThrought large numbers of
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progressively oriented professionals in close contact with the rural community.
The congresses of individual professional g-roups were the most effective means
for formulating the remedial actions in favor of the pressing- demands of the popu-
lation-in education, social security, medicine, and agriculture, and for providing
an opportunity for zemstvo experts to discuss their professional problems. The
"third element" was also instrumental in spearheading the crystallization of a poli-
tical movement anchored to the zemstvo institutions. This movement sought a re-
organization of the state administration, from top to bottom, along the lines of local
autonomy and representative government, and wa-s of some consequence in the
events of 1905. It also revealed the most basic inherent weakness of the zemstvo.
When the zemstvo followers were faced with the constitutional issues that dominated
the events of 1905 the over-representation of the landed gentry was instrumental
in breaking-the political unity of zemstvo delegates and bringing to an abrupt end
the zemstvo:political movement. In the three successive Dumas the zemstvo-
affiliated deputies became identified in increasing numbers with the conservative
forces. B. B. Veselovskii, the most eminent chronicler of the history of zemstvo,
made the following self-explanatory table of the distribution of zemstvo affiliates
in the first,three Dumas:
1st Duma
2nd Duma 3rd Duma
Left 5.7% 7.5%
Center (Const. Dem.) 78. 0 54. 7
Rightists and Octobrists 16.3 37. 8
12. 7
87. 3
Thrown back upon their purely local work, the zemstvo institutions found
themselves surrounded by new problems. The hegemony of bureaucracy became
more consistent and stubborn. The zemstvo authorities were ordered to submit
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their annual budgetary estimates to the government for scrutiny and approval. The
.. government began to make financial donations to zemstvo administrations earmarked
for various educational and other pusposes. This practice intensified government
interference with zemstvo activities and proved that government donations were
directly related to zemstvo self-government: the larger the financial donation of
the government the more drastic were the limitations on the meager attribaftes of
self-government. Small groups of Duma deputies introduced several bills aimed
at giving-zemstvo more local -authority and clearer jurisdiction. But these bills
died before they left the chambers of appropriate committees. The creation of the
All-Russiaii Union of Zemstvo for the Relief of Sick and Wounded Soldiers in 1914
was a patriotic gesture unaccompanied by any legislative measures aimed at ti:e
solution of the burning problem of zemstvo self-government.
The zemstvo were a historical force which marshalled and inspired the
liberal-minded groups of various ideological bents and which, on a small scale,
made the- democratic process a known quantity in Russia's political life. They
provided avenues for thousands of young people to participate in a political process
which stood apart from the domains of autocratic competence. Their weaknesses
did not -come from a shortage of dedicated men but from institutional limitations
imposed by monarchical absolutism. These weaknesses were:
I. -The peasants, the bulk of the population, were under-represented in
zemstvo ? assemblies which bore the mark of indisputable domination by the landed
41.
gentry. The demands to reduce the property "census" in the determination of
voting rights fell on deaf ears.
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2. The zemstvo had no local branches and remained substantially isolated
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from small local communities and were in no position to exercise effective control
22
over their numerous undertakings. The repeated demands for so-called small
zemstvo units, or township zemstvo, were consistently ignored by the government.
3. Because -they-po-sse-ssed no instruments of coercion, the zemstvo as-
semblies were compelled to depend to a rarge extent on local government officials
and their discretionary rights for the execution of their decisions.
4. With few exceptions, the government prevented the zemstvo institutions
from organizing larger alliances which would lend more weight to zemstvo demands
and would give these institutions a more influential place in the Russian piai.ty.
5. The government refused to establish zemstvo in those non-Russian
mlm?????????...41??
areas where it feared that these institutions would give an impetus to nationalist
aspiration, or would work against the interests of Russian settlers.
6. From the very beginning the government considered the zemstvo insti-
tutions inimical to the established political order and was concerned primarily
with curbing the domain of their activities and their influence on the local populace.
Count S. Witte summed up the problem by stating: "In an absolute system of state,
with its indispensable bureaucratic center, the zemstvo is not an effective mechan-
ism of administrations. "
Iv
In May of 1917 the Provisional Government passed a law establishing the
township zemstvo. The intent of the law was to provide the zemstvo with small
administrative units which could maintain direct contact with the local populace;
to give new 'life to the township (volost) which had become an antiquated political-
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administrative unit;23 and to democratize the elective procedures. The law stipu-
lated that all local inhabitants be granted the right to vote for township zem'stvo
deputies and that the suffrage be equal (no property "census"), direct (no elections
of "electors," 24), and secret. To give more substance to local self-government
the law also ruled that all non-elective township offices- -such as those of the
police officials and land captains- -be abolished and that their functions be trans-
ferred to local elective units. The implementation of the new law appeared during
the last weeks of the existence of the Provisional Government and even continued
during-the initial weeks of the Soviet regime. However, the October Revolution
prevented it from becoming a reality. History has shown that this law was more
a corrective of the drastic limitations which the monarchical regime had imposed
on local self-government than a herald of things to come. It embodied the demands
and aspirations of the liberal-minded groups which were inspired and to a large
extent politically educated by zemstvo institutions. It was predicated upon the
condition that the state surrender some of its important traditional prerogatives to
the representative bodies of the local community. It was exactly for these reasons
that the zemstvo institutions were allowed by the Soviet authorities to be squeezed
out of existence during the turbulent weeks following the October Revolution. Lenin
scorned the zemstvo of the Tsarist regime as "the fifth wheel of the Russian state
administration;"25 and he was quick to see that the democratic volost zemstvo,
established by the Provisional Government, was incompatible with the centralized
system of Soviet government.
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V
The monarchical regime created a political tradition which revolved around
the dichotomy of the state and society; the two were considered separate and un-
equal entities. The basic premise of the Soviet regime's political philosophy has
been the identity of the state and society. Both regimes apiotheosized the state:
the Tsarist regime identified it with the most vital aspects of social welfare, and
the Soviet regime made it equivalent with the totality of social life.
The monarchical dichotomy of the state and society justified the creation of
two sets of separate agencies: the bureaucratic hierarchy of the state and the
elected "Social" assemblies of local communities. The Soviet concept of the unity
of the state and society led to the institutional blending of bureaucratic and elective
bodies. --The local soviets are elected assemblies and-non-elective officials put
together. -The district soviet combines in principle two Tsarist institutions: the
local echelons of government bureaucracy and zemstvo assemblies. The Tsarist
regime favored the bureaucrat and helped him wage an incessant battle against the
local assemblies. The Soviet regime has entrusted the most important functions
to non-elective officials, yet it has been boastful and protective of the elected as-
semblies which have become a symbol of so-called Soviet democracy. Thus while
both systems relied primarily on non-elective systems of government, the one
recognizes the intrinsic values of the democratic myth and the other did not. The
one identified its political organization with an uncompromising struggle against
the democratic ideal; the other identifies its political organization with a whole
?
network of democratic myths. The one rejected democracy outright; the other has
made democratic myths a vital nexus in the relationship of the local community to
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the state.
The local soviets form one of the -most complex and confusing-parts of the
Soviet political system. There is a-qualitative difference between the constitutional
and official Communist definitions of the local soviets. The 1936 Constitution
states that the soviets are the only leg-itimate source of power in the U.S.S.R.,
whereas,. according to the official Communist interpretation, they are a "form of
, political organization of the masses, " which unites "all the working people and thus
facilitates the political guidance by the Party. " According- to the Constitution, the
soviets are a power locus; according to the authoritative Communist interpretation,
they are a power instrument or a "transmission belt" through which the Party
policies are carried out. We must recognize the very essential fact that the local
soviets perform important political functions both as the loci of fictitious power and
?
as power instruments.
The tasks of local soviets as loci of fictitious power are: to neutralize the
pronounced discrepancies between the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the
original Russian Communist Party and the practical aspects of present-day
centralization of authority; to serve as vehicles through which official policies are
equated with "the general will;" and to provide an outlet for, and to harness for
socially beneficial ends," the pre-Soviet, liberal-capitalistic tendencies in group
behavior.
As power instruments or "transmission belts" the local soviets perform
their functions through three distinct institutional mechanisms: the assemblies of
elected deputies, the appointed officials, and the aktivs. The elected assemblymen,
representing the local populace, make decisions relevant to local matters. Each
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decision must have a political preamble indicating the Party edict or pronounce-
ment in the spirit of which it has been formulated and must pass the scrutiny of
the "guiding core" of the Party operating-within the local Soviet and of the executive
committee of higher- Soviets. The appointed officials are of two types: those who
carry out the decisionfi of assemblies and those through whom the decisions of
higher government authorities are channeled to local communities. The latter of-
ficials are "co-n-trolled" by local soviets but actually they are subordinated to the
corresponding officials at the higher bureaucratic echelons. The aktivs are groups
of volunteers which perform various auxiliary functions and through which larger
segments of local population are mobilized to perform many socially useful functions
in a manner approved by the government. These aktivs are a vital vehicle through
which the identification of society with the state is given concrete expression. The
street committees, which operate as "social" units within the framework of local
soviets, are only one example of such aktivs. These committees perform
"political and educational" work among the non-working inhabitants (housewives,
0
elder people),- give assistance to the Red Cross and various other voluntary as-
sociations, help government credit officials in screening the applicants for loans,
assist various children's institutions (day-care centers, nursery schools), track
down petty violators of peace and order, work toward curbing juvenile delinquency,
26
and undertake a multitude of other assignments.
During the Tsarist regime samodeiatel'nost (independent action) was con-
sidered the dynamic aspect of samoupravlenie (self-government). The Tsarist
scorn for local "independent action" paralleled the official curbs imposed on local
self-government. Yet the proof is abundant that zemstvo institutions achieved
C.
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appreciable results despite rather than because of the government authorities.
Undoubtedly, a kernel of self-government was present.
In the Soviet system the term samodeiatel'nost has become very popular;
yet it is never identified, and has no connection, with samoupravlenie. It simply
stands for the existence of voluntary groups clustered around legitimate institutions
and entrusted with the performance of minor functions in the immediate sphere of
everyday life. In the Soviet Union there are no areas of independent associative
life. In the Tsarist system there were such areas, but they were results of a
traditional lack of official concern with certain domains of social activities. The
Soviet system is totalitarian in the full---sen-se of the-word; the Tsarist system was
totalitarian in its basic orientation but not in its institutional makeup.
. ?
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_ FOOTNOTES TO VUGINICH
1. A. A. Kornilov, Ocherki po istorii obshchestvennago dvizheniia i krest'ianskago
. _
diela v' Rossii (St. Petersburg-, 1905), P. 32.0.
2. For a detailed description of the various types of obshchina and its relationship
to the village community see Geroid Tanquary Robinson, Rural Russia Under
the-Old Regime (New York, 1949), pp. 67-78.
3. B. B. Veselovskii, "Detsentralizatsiia upravleniia i zadachi zemstvo", in
B. B. Veselovskii and Z. G. Frenkel, eds. , 1864-1914 Iubileinyi zemskii
sbornik' (St. Petersburg, 1914), pp. 35-36.
4. Gr, Dzhanshiev-, Epokha velikikh' reform' (Moscow, 1900), pp. 508, 520.
5. Veselovskii and Frenkel, op. cit., pp. vii.
6. For a detailed description of zemstvo achievements during the period from
1864 to 1914 see Prince G. E. L'vov and T. I. Polner, Nashe zemstvo i 50
let' ego raboty (Moscow, 1914).
7. N. N. Avinov, "Glavnyia cherty v' istorii zakonodatel'stva o zemskikh
uchrezhdeniiakh", in Veselovskii and Frenkel, op. cit., p. 3.
8. For a brief review of the leading exponents of this theory see: P. P.
Gronskii, '1Teorii samoupraVleniia v russkoi nauke", in Veselovskii and
Frenkel, op. cit., pp. 76-85.
9. Avinov, op. cit. , p. 28.
10. Ibid.
11. A. P. Feodorov, ed., Ustavl o zemskikh' povinnostiakh' (St. Petersburg,
1908).
12. For various reasons the townfolk showed little interest in zemstvo elections.
B. Veselovskii, K' voprosu o klassovykh' interesakh' v' zemstvie (St.
Petersburg, 1905), pp. 35-36.
13. Prince Dm. Shakhovskoi, "Politicheskaia techeniia v' russkom' zemstve",
in Veselovskii and Frenkel, op. cit., p. 444. For the distribution of
zemstvo deputies in terms of their estate identification see Kalend.ar'
spravochnik' zemskago dielatelia, 1912 g. (St. Petersburg, 1912), p. 96.
14. Shakhovskoi, op. cit., p. 444.
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15. Ibid., pp. -449-450.
16. Avinov, op. cit., p. 17.
17. Veselovskii, op. cit., p. 43.
18. Vladimir Trutovskii, Sovremennoe zemstvo (St. Petersburg, 1915), p. 33.
19. Ibid.
20. In thirty-four provinces there were approximately 3, 000 physicians, over
1,000 veterinarians, 1,1-00 agricultural experts, 1,000 insurance agents,
1,400 medical technicians and midwives, 300 statisticians, 500 engineers
and technicians, and 45, 000 teachers. Ibid., pp. 47-48.
21. A. Ia. , "Biurokratiia", in F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Efron, eds. , Entsiklo-
pedicheskii slovarl (St. Petersburg,- 1895), I, p. 293.
22. K. Golovin, K' voprosu o volostnom' zemstve (St. Petersbtirg, 1912), pp. 1-2.
23. The "estate" character of the volost meant in practice that although all rural
inhabitants were equally entitled to the benefits from this unit, only the
peasants paid the taxes for its maintenance. Moreover, the township headman
was gradually transformed into an agent of the government rather than a
spokesman of peasants,
- -
24. P. P. Gronskii, Novaia volost' (Petrograd, 1917), pp. 4 ff.
25. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, V (4th ed.), p. 32.
26. V. V. Kopeichikov, Pravovye akty mestnykh organov gosudarstvennoi vlasti
upravleniia (Moscow, 1956), p. 51.
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?
COURTS AND THE LEGAL SYSTEM
by
John N. Hazard
The Soviet court had achieved a complete break with the past by early in
1919 in the eyes of the Commissar of Justice, D. I. Kursky. In jubilation he
wrote:
Neither Roman law, nor subsequent bourgeois law
gave such authority to a judge. Perhaps we can find
some analogy in more ancient primitive law. But
one has only to consider the whole complexity of con-
temporary social relationships and to contrast these
_
with the primitive usage which was developed into a
norm by the eldel-s, by the immeasurable difference
between the sources of primitive law and of the new
law created by the proletarian revolution. 1
The Commissar was saying that the Russian revolution had ended continuity
between the Imperial and Soviet legal systems, not only in law but in the culture
pattern of Russian society. Yet, within the brief span of three years he was back
on the platform before his fellows of the Commissariat of Justice in explanation
of an apparent reversal of policy. 2 A civil code was to be enacted which he ad-
mitted created a- close resemblance to the legal pattern existing prior to the revo-
lution and to the pattern of law found in other states influenced by Roman law. In
short, continuity of civil law was being restored in the cultural sense, and the
blame was being laid at the door of the English bourgeoisie. It was this hated
class through its Prime Minister, Lloyd George, that was said to be forcing the
new Soviet Russian state to adopt a system of law which was sufficiently pre-
dictable and familiar to attract English capital to a nearly destitute Russia.
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-
_
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It is temptipg to draw the conclusion from developments in the Soviet legal
0 a
system as it was prepared for the needs of the New Economic Policy that continuity
with all that had happened since 1864 was being re-established in the legal sphere
der
after nearly five years of experimentation with novel institutions and novel law and
procedure. 3 There is much evidence to support such a conclusion. Yet, the
Bolsheviks continued to claim that their legal system, even in its N. E. P. form,
could not be considered related to that of the past. Soviet legal philosophers at-
tempted to explain the difference in terms of new wine in old bottles, or as
Eugene B. Pashukanis preferred to say, as new content in old bourgeois forms. 4
Pashukanis was subsequently denounced for even this limited acceptance of the
influence of the past, and those who came after him belittled the affinity of Soviet
and pre-Soviet codes by saying that there was continuity only of terminology,
while both form and content had been changed with the advent of the new Sovfet
type of socialist economy. 5
Two distinguished non-communist legal scholars in France have also
held that continuity with the past was broken by the Bolshevik revolution. Baron
Nolde has written that "the Soviet legal system, though it has borrowed important
rules from the German and Swiss Codes, is nevertheless an original and autono-
mous system. One might say that it is more economic than legal. "6 Professor
....
I
Rene David has said that of the five principal legal systems of the world, one is
the "system of the Soviet world, profoundly different from the former Zi-h.e Christiap7
_
by reason of the socialist structure of the societies to which it is applied, with all
the consequences which such a socialist structure, which is essentially an economic
_
order, inevitably impose on the political, social and moral order. "7
_
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The fact that distinguished non-Soviet jurists deny as loudly as Soviet legal
theorists that the Soviet system provides historical continuity provides strong
evidence that continuity has been broken, but there are eminent voices raised
contra. Oxford's Professor of Comparative Law, F. H. Lawson, has written:
How far is it 5he Sovief an original system? The
question is complicated by the presence of an ideology
which has not prevailed in the West, though it is not
Russian but western in origin. However Russian the
Soviet leaders may be they are in the Russian sense
of the term westerners and not easterners of the
Panslavic school drawing inspiration from the glori-
ous Russian past. Yet some western observers are
inclined to mark off Soviet law from western law
precisely because of this prevailing Marxist ideology,
which they say transforms the whole system. I doubt
the accuracy of this diagnosis.... 8
The effort to determine whether continuity exists is made even more diffi-
cult by another complicating factor, namely that of semantics. The present
writer has been criticized violently on occasion for using terminology of non-
Soviet legal systems in describing Soviet legal institutions. He has been told that
he should not Use the words "court" or "judge" or "code of law" to describe Soviet
tribunals or the rules they claim to be applying. 9 Such criticism requires the in-
vention of new terminology to meet the special conditions of Soviet society, and,
9
indeed, there is reason in support of such a demand, because terminology auto-
matically creates the impression of continuity when none may exist.
The basic difficulty in reserving established terminology for the Anglo-
American system and perhaps that of western Europe and its heirs in Latin
America is that there exists wide variation throughout the world in the form of
tribunal that ?settles disputes and in the principles used in their settlement, whether
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one looks at the ancient past or even at systems in various parts of the modern
world such as pre-1911 China. Were the view to be adopted that established
terminology must be reserved for a specific type of court and law, it would be
necessary to develop a vocabulary of considerable size to describe the varying
institutions that settle disputes and keep order in varying types of society so that
those who read and run might not draw inaccurate conclusions.
To the present writer, at least, the world seems to have given a negative
answer to a demand for the creation of a new vocabulary, for in every land and
at every time legal institutions have generally been described in universal terms.
Not many scholars have insisted that the positivist is not a philosopher of law merely
because he denies that the principles enacted by a legislature as rules of conduct
for a society rest upon any immutable base such as that claimed by the natural
law philosophers. If the positivists generally have a place in the pantheon of the
law, then the Soviet jurists cannot be e?ccluded, for as Professor John C. H. Wu
has written in the Catholic Encyclopedia, the doctrines espoused by Andrei
Vyshinsky when he was the topmost definition maker in the U.S.S.R. are but
"positivism pushed to its logical end.
Use of terms common to different societies in describing institutions and
rules designed to settle disputes must somehow be divorced from any implication
i
of continuity n Russian and Soviet society if we are to avoid a debate over se-
mantics. This will not be easy to achieve, for weight is given to the continuity
argument when words' in continuous use for centuries are employed to describe
modern Soviet institutions, yet the effort must be made to think of the words as
"colorless, " or the inquiry into continuity will be defeated before it begins.
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The contrast between old and new was drawn by the Bolsheviks promptly
after the Russian revolution. The institutions created by Alexander II in the
judicial reform of 186411 were nominally abolished by the first Soviet decree on
the courts. 12 It closed the doors of the three levels of general courts created
by the 1864 reform as well as the commercial courts which had been functioning
in Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, and Warsaw. The general courts had been
created in 1864 to provide a forum Or the trial of all but relatively minor offenses
and for the settling of civil disputes except those of small value, the value varying
with the type of claim involved. While abolishing the general courts, the 1917
decree was less disruptive of the former courts closely associated with the people
in whose name the revolution had been fought, namely the volost courts and the
Justice of the Peace courts.
The volost courts had been created by the Emancipation Act of 186113 to
provide a state-sponsored tribunal for the peasantry to replace the village courts
previously functioning among the serfs. Jurisdiction of these volost courts as
they continued to exist up to the time of the revolution, had been limited to petty
civil claims and criminal prosecutions among the peasants. Control over them
was exercised by the Ministry of the Interior.
The -Justice of the Peace courts.had passed: through,periods.of .wkissitude,
but they had-survived to 1917 in many urban communities of the Empire. 14 They
had jurisdiction over civil claims up to five hundred rubles in value, in contrast
to the jurisdiction of the volost courts of one hundred rubles, and in some cases
they could hear claims of higher value, as with real property actions. At the
time of the revolution, their criminal jurisdiction was also limited, largely to
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crimes for which penalties might be fines up to three hundred rubles in value or
imprisonment for periods not exceeding eighteen months. _
The Soviet system inherited, as a result of the Tsarist legislation, a
structural pattern which included three court systems, and this fact was reflected
in the earliest Soviet decrees. The first Soviet decree abolished only the general
court system and declared that subsequently a decree would define the courts that
would replace it. The activity of the Justice of the-Peace courts was only sus-
pended, to be undertaken by a substitute institution composed of a single full time
judge and two lay judges to be chosen in turn for each session of the court from a
panel prepared for the purpose. The work of the volost courts was absorbed in
this new institution. Jurisdiction of the new court was limited as the Justice of
the Peace jurisdiction had been, the maximum in civil cases now being 3,000
rubles, and in criminal cases crimes for which a penalty of up to two years' im-
prisonment was provided by law. Appeals were to be forbidden unless the judgment
exceeded one hundred rubles or there had been a sentence in excess of seven days'
detention. To hear such appeals there was to be a review of the record without
rehearing of witnesses by all of the full time judges of the county assembled as a
"congress" from time to time.
Outside of the new court system there was to be established a separate
set of tribunals to deal with cases of alleged counter-revolution. To the Soviet
officials of the time thietribunal seems to have been conceived as being not a
deliberative body bearing any relationship to the courts of the past, but an in-
*
strumeni of the revolution, which meant in their minds an institution which acted
qpickly and without any attempt to assure complete accuracy in determination of
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guilt if this seemed necessary to save the regime of the Bolsheviks.
0
By February, 1918, the specialists in the Commissariat of Justice had
prepared a second decree on the courts, 15 by which they created. a system of
courts, called District People's Courts, to try cases exceeding the jurisdiction of
the local people's courts created by the first decree, and to hear cases held over
from the old regime. There was to be more emphasis upon professionalism in
the district courts, as evidenced by their structure. Civil claims were to be
heard before a bench of three professional judges, supplemented by four lay judges,
while criminal cases were to be heard by a bench of twelve lay judges and two
alternate lay judges, chaired by one of the members of the staff of professional
judges assigned to the court. The decree made no mention of any requirement of
legal training for the professional judges, although it permitted judges of the old
courts to be selected for the new positions, and, in fact, most of the early judges
in these District courts were legally trained. To provide control over these courts
a review of the record was to be permitted by a panel of judges elected for the
purpose from among their own number by all District court judges in each
province. Remand for new trial was perinitted if the errors were found to be
substantial, and also if the decision was found to be clearly unjust in substance.
A "supreme court control" was ordered established in the capital to assure uni-
formity of practice in the District courts. Neither it, nor the intermediate re-
view meetings of District court judges, was ever established, and the District
courts themselves were reduced in jurisdiction by the third decree on the courts
of July 20, 191816 and absorbed completely in the local people's courts by the
People's Court Act of November 30, 1918,17 although the courts did not cease
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functioning until.January 15, 1919.
?
Those who look for continuity see in the District courts the heirs of the
general courts of the Empire, and in the new peoples' courts the heirs of the
_
Justice of the Peace and volost courts. Here was, indeed a double system of
courts structured in such a way as to place before one court the lesser cases
measured in terms of money claimed or crime committed, and the more complex
cases, measured in the same terms, before a court of superior training and ex-
perience, and having as an integral part of its structure what amounted to a jury.
To be sure the jury now bore a new title but it was similar in structure to a jury
in that it was composed of laymen called to serve for the single case on which it
sat. Further, the professional judges in the new district court usually had legal
education as had been the case in the Imperial General courts, while the judges in
the peoples' court had no such education but only such experience as they acquired
*
in practice, like most of the Justices of the Peace in the Empire, whom they had
replaced.
Weight is lent to the theory of continuity by the evolution of the peoples'
court after _absorption of the District court in 1919. In this evolution speciali-
zation emerged. By a circular dated August 27, 192018 and signed by Commissar
Kursky, the councils of people's judges which had become the reviewing authority
for the peoples' courts by the Peoples' Court Act of 1918 were authorized to es-
tablish "special sessions" to have jurisdiction over cases referred by the
Provincial military tribunals and the security police (the Cheka), and also over
a the most important cases falling within the general jurisdiction of the peoples'
courts. Here was a return to the concept of hierarchy within the court system
0 00
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based upon the complexity and seriousness of a case. Since the revolutionary
?
tribunals and the Cheka continued to function to find and eliminate political ene-
mies, whether presumed or real, the new hierarchy seems to have been recog-
nition that the courts created by the Peoples' Court Act of 1918 were inadequate
to the task of the complicated non-political case.
The policy makers appear to have been forced against their will after
abolition of the district courts created by their decree No. 2, to return in mid-
1920 to a hierarchical court system. They thought this a retreat, and they con-
tinued to-talk about a "single peoples' court," but in fact they had left behind the
simplicity of structure for which they had struggled in earlier ?The actual
establishment of the "special session" waited for another instruction of the
Commissariat of Justice, dated September 16, 1920,19 but the vital decision had
been taken in August, 1920.
Control by a supreme court was a concept to be approached carefully in
?
Bolshevik thinking, but such control was foretold by a three line note to the
Peoples' Court Act of 1920. By this note it was provided that the Commissariat
of Justice would have the supreme control over criminal sentences and civil de-
cisions of the peoples' courts and of the councils of people's judges in each
province. The Act gave no particulars of the new institution, but it was followed
by a decree of March 10, 1921,20 establishing details of what was called two
years later by a Soviet historian "the prelude to the organization of a supreme
cassational-court."
By the events of 1920 and 1921 the stage was set for the judicial reform
0
accompanying the introduction of the New Economic Policy. The draftsmen of
lo
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the N. E. P. reforms chose to pretend that they were creating a simple system,
but in fact they created a three stepped system, headed by a Supreme Court, no
longer a department of the Commissariat of Justice but an independent agency of
government. The Judiciary Act of 192221 reintroduced a structure bearing an
external resemblance, at least, to the three level system of general courts in
the Empire. To be sure the jury, as it had been operated under the Empire, had
disappeared in the 1922 Act, but the courts of original jurisdiction were to have
two lay judges upon the bench. One could argue with the philosophers that quality
changes with quantity to find that the element of popular control created by a jury
had vanished because the number had been reduced from twelve to two, but if one
took such a position, it would have amounted to formalization of what is neces-
sary to introduce popular influences into judicial decision making, and the Supreme
Court has intimated in the United States that there is nothing mystical in the
number twelve. 22
Commissar Kursky might also have argued, in customaity Marxist fashion,
that the new court system was further different in quality from that of the Empire.
The old judges held over from the Imperial regime had gone. The judges were
now men and women presumably imbued with the principles espoused by the
Bolsheviks, if not themselves members of the Communist Party, and they were
applying a law enacted by the new regime and not held over from the Imperial era.
This latter point is of major importancein any search for continuity and
?
change, for it may well be that not institutions but what they do is the factor of
major importance in any such determination. Before advancing to a consideration
of substantive law, there must, however, be examination of two factors of
?
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paramount importance in any study of courts, namely the prosecution and the bar.
The policy makers of 1917 seem to have felt that they required continuity of
the institution called "court" to cope with disputes in society, but they were corn-
pletely certain that they were through with a professional prosecution and bar.
Neither institution was to survive the revolution, for it was presumed that in the new
society with its anticipated high level of social consciousness, the community or at
least an injured individual or his relatives would rise up to bring a social offender
to court, and the accused or his relatives would appear in protection of the innocent
if such protection had any foundation in fact. The judge was to be like a primitive
chieftain, authorized to explore the dispute in detail, calling such witnesses as he
wished, taking such views as he thought necessary, and interrogating the parties in
his- effort to make up his Mind as to what had happened and what should be done.
Decree No. 123 abolished the professional bar of the Empire and thus
broke institutional continuity with the past. It also abolished the system of
prosecutors. Any blameless citizen of either sex having civil rights was to be
permitted to appear as accuser or defender before the court from the moment of
the beginning of the investigation. Yet, the first decree did not prohibit payment
of lawyer's fees, and practice indicates that some lawyers continued to practice
and to appear under the permission granted to blameless citizens, but usually
only when an appeal was taken to the congress of people's judges. The second
decree on the courts, 24 recognizing as it did the need to carry on with cases
inherited from the past and to try complicated new matters, permitted lawyers
to appear on a professional basis. The decree also permitted courts to call to
their aid professional accusers, although these were not yet organized as state
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prosecutors. Both defenders and prosecutors were to be enrolled in a "college"
which was a panel from which courts might call persons to prosecute and in-
dividuals might seek counsel. There was no prohibition against selecting persons
from outside the college if no fee was paid, but to the extent that any professional-
ism was to enter into the relationship, the college could not be avoided.
The professional bar which was brought into existence for the district
courts did not serve in the peoples' courts. Soon judges at the local level began
to complain about their task, for they found the presentation of facts on behalf of
the accused inadequate even when every effort was made to give the accused the
opportunity to defend himself directly or through relatives. In June, 1918, a
-general meeting of the Moscow professional local court judges adopted a reso-
lution in favor of establishing a college of legal defenders to assist them with their
work. 25 The first rules of procedure created for the peoples' local courts in the
summer of 1918,26 provided for practice by members of a college of defenders,
?
although no such colleges had been created officially. Even with the new authori-
zation, judges were permitted to exclude lawyers if a civil case seemed non-
complicated or concerned with divorce.
The people's Court Act of 191827 created a "college of defenders, accusers
and representatives of the parties in civil sui"11.1. made of the bar a salaried
civil service available to the court. Here was something unimagined during the
Imperial regime, but its novelty did not keep it alive even in a society favoring
novel institutions: The Commissar of Justice returned to expose the abuses which
had arisen under the civil service system and demanded separation of the insti-
tution of accusers from that of defenders and the discarding of the salary concept
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for counsel. 28
Legal aid as a labor duty of those with legal education was made the next
experiment by the People's Court Act of 1920. 29 A registry carried the names of
those with competence, and a person desiring a lawyer requested a man from the
registry, paying no fee. The lawyers, whether serving in a civil or criminal suit,
were to receive their regular wages at their regular place of work. This was their
service, like that of jury duty in common law countries. Relatives might still
appear in defense of a party, as well as representatives of labor unions, but this
was but retention of a symbol of the thinking of the early days. It suggested that
the communist leaders were unwilling to accept the fact that their system of legal
institutions was becoming complicated and was moving away from the influence
and control of the people on farms and in the factories.
The legal duty idea broke down, as can be imagined, under the impact of
the restoration of a measure of private enterprise with the N. E.P. Every one
expected the courts to be flooded with lawsuits, and the whole question of legal
?_
representation required rethinking. A congress of employees of the Commissariat
agreed in January, 1922, that a professional bar had to be established in a college
of defenders tied to the courts." Members were to be admitted to the bar only
.on examination. It was to elect its own officers and discipline itself. A system
of legal fees was reinstituted, although subject to a tariff for workers and clerks
and to be waived for those unable to pay. On May 26, 1922 the decree incorpo-
rating the new concept became law. 31
The institution of the professional prosecutor was undergoing a parallel
metamorphosis. The People's Court Act of 1920 placed the accusatorial function
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in a newly created institution to be organized in each Province by the Provincial
executive committee's department of justice. Candidates nominated by the exe-
cutive committee would be appointed by the Provincial soviet. When a judge re-
quired help, he would file a request and the assignment would be made.
The introduction of the New Economic Policy hastened the disintegration
of the system as it had come into being, for it seemed obvious that with the?resto-
.ration of some measure of capitalism, there would be restored the economic basis
for class enemies. After vigorous debate which was resolved only with the inter-
vention of the Politburo of the Communist Party, the office of prosecutor was
created in the Commissariat of Justice, with the Commissar himself as chief of
the office. 32 The office was highly centralized so that even the provincial prose-
cutors were to be named by the prosecutor of the republic and to be transferred
and removed solely by him, and the provincial administrations were to have no
say whatever in the appointment or activity of the prosecutors assigned to them.
Not until June 20, 1933 was there a major change in the office, for at that time
there came the end of republic autonomy in the field of prosecution. 33 There was
created a Prosecutor's office in the U.S. with general direction over the ac-
tivities of the Prosecutor's offices in the several republics. The basis was laid
for the highly centralized system of prosecution which was incorporated in the
Constitution of 193634 and is retained to the present day.
The 1922 reforms can be seen to have created a multi-stepped system of
courts, a professional prosecutor and a professional defender. To be sure they
were not entirely like institutions charged with similar functions in other lands,
but they had lost with the 1922 reforms their most extreme features of difference.
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The courts were no longer the primitive tribunals hailed by the Commissar of
Justice in early 1 91 9, nor were the prosecutors and defenders citizens who came
forward on a non-professional basis to accuse and to defend. Later, in 1930,
the bar was completely collectivized without special legislation, in that private
practice was discouraged by discriminatory taxation, and practice became centered
in associations subject to the control .of the college, which in turn was subject to
the control of the Commissariat of Justice. This supervision went beyond the
usual control over the bar exercised by the courts in the United States, and to
some analysts of the Soviet bar it made possible the independence of the bar
which they found to have been an outstanding feature of the bar of the Russian
Empire. It has been said that "The organization of Soviet lawyers is not a bar
in the western sense of the word--the kind of bar which functioned in pre-
revolutionary Russia. "35 This is so, but it can probably be found to have suf-
ficiently similar functions to those of the bar elsewhere to merit the appellation.
Its shortcoming has been in the way in which it has feared to perform its duties
courageously in political cases. In this aspect continuity has been broken with
the past.
If one turns from institutions to the law applied by them, one finds a
similar progression of events, from simplicity to complexity. It was the dream
of the Bolsheviks to institute a system of law which would facilitate the emergence
of economic and social relationships on which a new type of society might be
built. Yet, the new leaders were sufficiently realistic to appreciate that this
could not be done quickly, the more so since they had given no thought before the
revolution to the multitudinous details of which the law is made. They were
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prepared only on some Tnajor points, dictated by Marxist principles, and headed by
the concept that private ownership of producer goods must be abolished, and
ownership of these goods placed in the state. Their first act was_to abolish
private ownership by great landlords of their land, 36 and as soon as the influence
of the Socialist Revolutionaries could be overcome, they acted to abolish all
private ownership of land. 37
The details of law and procedure had to wait until the new rulers had time
to invent them. In consequence the first decree on the courts38 instructed the new
people's judges to use as a guide the laws of the ousted government to the extent
that they had not been revoked by the revolution and were not contrary to the revo-
lutionary consciousness of the judges. The second decree39 creating the district
courts authorized them to be guided by the civil and criminal laws existing up to
that time to the extent that they had not been revoked and did not conflict with
socialist justice. While the formula had been changed slightly, it suggested that
judges would take what they could from the laws of the past in deciding a case,
tempering the provisions by the judge's own concept of the type of justice compatible
with Soviet Russia's new variety of socialism. Not until the People's Court Act of
191840 was referenc-e.tbDthel:aw.is of: fir e?reviol,iitionary?goye rnment s'Horbidden. The
judges were now to apply decrees of the new government, and in the many circum-
stances not covered by decree to be guided by their socialist concept of justice.
At this point formal continuity of law was indubitably ended. 41
The formal break with the substantive law of the past had been made com-
plete, for judges after 1920 were expected to apply common sense, revolutionary
expediency and whatever residual concept of law they might have. An examination
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of practice by the Commissar of Justice disclosed so wide a variation of views as
to appropriate law, that codification was ultimately undertaken in the interest of
establishing uniformity.
The Commissar of Justice was himself less of a prisoner of the concepts
of the past than some of his judges. He found it desirable to correct their decisions
in a 1919 article42 by selecting those which seemed wise. In most of the cases the
problem was whether the Imperial law should be applied, not because of any legal
value, but because of the wisdom of its solutions even for the new state. He praised
a decision which had found a crime in the paying of a minor to have sexual relations,
even though in the court's view such an act was not criminal under Imperial law.
He praised the leniency of a court hearing a charge of murder when it was indicated
that the killing had occurred without prior planning and as a result of intoxication
and because there must have been some group or gregarious psychological in-
fluence. He thought an acquittal of a charge of attempted robbery justified when it
was found that the defendant had entered a house armed with a revolver and a bomb
to take over an apartment from the owner, motivated by his sympathies for ideal-
istic anarchy. The man was punished lightly only for unauthorized requisition.
Civil cases were also held up as models.
A suit against a railway company for injury caused to a passenger was de-
cided in favor of the passenger in spite of the fact that experts needed to be ex-
amined to determine whether the plaintiff could work. The court refused to call
additional experts on the ground that they could imagine no employment for an
amputee subjected to hysteria, and that people of the world knew better than ex-
perts what was necessary to hold a job. A claim for maintenance of a child born
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out of wedlock was granted, but a plea for costs was rejected because the court
found that the defendant had two families, and that to require him to pay costs
would be "like putting a noose around his neck." A suit for maintenance of a
spouse was rejected because the marriage seemed to have been contracted fic-
titiously to permit the woman to escape from the difficult situation in which some
one had placed her, and the woman was still able to work. Commissar Kur sky
liked these decisions because they were "shot through with the spirit of unhindered
imagination."
All of this was to change with the coming of the N. E. P. and the enactment
of codes of law. If we turn to the new criminal code, we find it epitomized by
Professor N. S. Timasheff who has said, "But not all is unique in that TS-ovief
law; there are also many elements in which Soviet law differs only slightly from
pre-Revolutionary Russian law. "43 For Timasheff Soviet law is unique in-so-far
as it expressed the ideocratic nature of Soviet society, but he maintains that there
are especially abundant similarities in the sphere of criminal law. He declares
that all of the legally trained draftsmen of the 1922 Soviet criminal code were
conscious of the 1903 Imperial Russian criminal code, and that an inspection of
the 1922 code makes it clear that structurally there is nothing revolutionary in it
over the 1903 predecessor. The major contrast is in the Soviet code's authori-
zation to courts to apply criminal law by "analogy," which the 1903 code specifi-
cally forbade. Yet, the 1845 criminal code of the Empire had permitted such
?
application, and Professor Timasheff concludes, "There can be no doubt that the
provisions of the Soviet codes reproduce, with verbal change only, the provisions
of the code of 1845. "44
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In the important "analogy" provision, the Soviet criminal code has broken
the continuity with what had immediately preceded it, but a legal historian might
say that it was the interlude from 1903 to 1917 that itself had broken the continuity
of more than half a century, and that the Soviet code had but restored the continuity.
The Soviet criminal code's provisions on the general properties of criminal
actions are found by Timasheff to be generally similar to those of the 1903 code.
Thus, the provisions relating to responsibility of the criminal because of psycho-
logical disturbance, self-defense, and various types of intent are found to bear
similarity. The distinction between attempt and preparation is that of the 1903
code, although in the revision of 1926, a departure from 1903 and 1922 was intro-
duced, in that preparation was assimilated with criminal attempt and both were
made punishable as the consummated crime.
Some elements of the new Soviet code represent a complete break with the
past in Professor Timasheff's view. He notes the "expanded jurisdiction" by
which he presumably means the reaching out by the Soviet code to make it a crime
against the Soviet state to participate abroad in activity harmful to the working
man's cause. He also notes the penalties prescribed by the code and the rules for
their application, by which he presumably means the penalty of required work at
the criminal's job with reduction of pay and loss of seniority, but without guard.
He also draws a clear distinction between the provisions of the Soviet criminal
code on so-called "counter-revolution" and the Imperial law, saying that the whole
chapter on counter-revolutionary crime is an improvisation.
Timasheff finds similarity, however, in the Soviet approach to murder,
placing at another's disposal means to commit suicide, or instigating a minor or
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a.n irresponsible person to commit suicide, bodily injury and violation of bodily
?
integrity, incarceration by use of violence, kidnapping, suppression or substitution
of a child and sexual offenses. Even property crimes were defined in terms sub-
stantially similar to those of Imperial law, sometimes that of the code of 1845.
?
Also crimes by officials, which are sometimes considered as having been developed
in unique fashion under Soviet pressures, are shown to bear close resemblance to
those of the Imperial Code, although by 1926 the second Soviet criminal code had
adopted some new limitations. As to the 1926 code generally, Timasheff concludes
that it is merely a restatement of that of 1922 and since it is still in force, the
impact of pre-Revolutionary law on Soviet law is still there, and he adds the
Revolution has been not so complete as one might expect a priori. "45
Civil law has fared in not dissimilar fashion. Vladimir Gsovski who has
made the most thorough comparison of old and new is much struck by the contrast
in spirit or purpose of the Soviet code from what went before, but his monumental
work is studied with comparisons which show that the draftsmen of 1922 were much
influenced by the civil law of the Empire. In the sphere of property law, he finds
that "a non-Soviet jurist would look in vain for a new concept of ownership in the
Soviet civil code. "46 The new feature of Soviet law in the property field lies out-
side the code in the provisions prohibiting the ownership of certain types of property,
these being the types which can be used to gain income through the employment of
the labor of others. For the items that may be owned by the individual, the law is
as old as Rome itself. Milovan Djilas seems prepared to argue in his The New Class
that even in the public property sphere familiar concepts of property law have re-
appeared in the U.S.S.R. He declares, "As defined by Roman law, property
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constitutes the use, enjoyment and disposition of material goods. The: Communist
political bureaucracy uses, enjoys, and disposes of nationalized property. "47 On
this analysis he concludes that there has been developed a new class with its feet
resting on property ownership, in that the incidents of the new class's control over
nationalized property are the same as the incidents of ownership as known to Roman
law, and, therefore, to civil law systems everywhere, including Imperial Russia.
To any sweeping conclusion that no new dimension has been added to
property law by the Soviet codes, one must counter the law of housing tenancy"
and use of land. 49 Transformation of the tenant's rights from contract on which
they rested prior to the revolution to status on which they now rest has everywhere
been regarded as one of the major developments in law nbt only in the U.S.S.R.
but elsewhere since the social developments following upon the heels of the in-
dustrial revolution. In the land law sector, the complete prohibition of alienation
of use of agricliltural land, and the restriction on alienation of small private house
lots in that perinission of the local governmental authorities is required are noted
changes in the post-revolutionary law of the U.S.S.R., yet they rest on laws out--
side the code, and for other property relationships the code offers no such in-
novations.
In contracts law Dr. Gsovski finds that Soviet law "has evolved from the
efforts of Soviet legislators and jurists to use within the framework of socialist
economy the concept of contract as developed in the civil law countries. "50 He
finds that the Soviet draftsmen followed certain theoretical constructions of
.European law, as developed by Russian pre-revolutionary writers of renown. He
finds it necessary in discussing the law of sales to discuss Imperial law because
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this influenced the Soviet concept. 51
Perhaps in tort the Soviet draftsmen provided a distinct break with the past
in that they introduced the concept of liability without fault, while pre-revolutionary
law required the presence of fault to establish liability. 52 Here was indeed a
change from the past at what is the very heart of the law of obligations, yet the
rest of the outside world has moved in the same direction since the Russian revo-
lution and without regard to it, and pre-revolutionary Russia was not impervious
to the influence of social pressures in the law. 53 It is hard to decide whether
continuity has been broken, for with the advance of the industrial process and the
accidents which have accompanied it, have come in western countries beyond reach
of the Russian revolution not only workman's compensation schemes, but also jury
verkicts which have created what one western scholar has been bold to call,
"Negligence without Fault. 1,54 Is one to say that this is not part of a continuum,
but rather a "break-through" like those which occur in the progress of scientific
research?
Perhaps continuity has been broken in that of recent years in contrast to
the development in western lands, the Soviet courts have swung away from the
provisions of the Soviet civil code making fault unnecessary to reestablish the
principle that there must be wilfulness or negligence in all but the extrahazardous
-
case to permit a finding of liability, and in so doing they have reversed the con-
tinuing development common to western countries and swung nearer to the pre-
revolutionary. attitude. Still, they have made what looks like a reversal with the
realization that minimum damages will be forthcoming to an injured employee
through operation of the scheme of socialized medicine and the social insurance
?
^
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law administered by the labor unions and the Ministries of social insurance through-
out the Soviet republics. Thus, there is a considerable part of the law which has
progressed in step with legal systems of the west.
Inheritance law among the peasants has remained as it was before the
revolution, as has been explained above. Although inheritance law among the
urban population was specifically abolished in a 1918 decree55 in favor of a tempo-
rary substitute for the social insurance plan which was expected to be introduced
?
soon thereafter, the concept of inheritance for the urban population was restored
with the 1922 code56 and has been expanded in subsequent years. This expansion
seems to have been made necessary as property incentives have been increased
to encourage production for the five year plans, and today the inheritance rules,
including as they do the right to bequeath property by will, have much in common
with civil law countries everywhere. 57 Perhaps the major difference lies in
limitation upon the circle of heirs to whom a testator may bequeath his estate,
but even this circle has been expanded to include nephews and nieces, and the
limitation serves primarily to exclude the creation or support of private charities
which are notable beneficiaries of estates in the United States, although not such
common beneficiaries in civil law countries. Even the restrictions on bequests
which appear in the code are illusory as to property of the type which a testator
might wish to leave to persons outside the circle, for they do not apply to savings
bank deposits and government bonds, which may be left to any one, by simple
notification to the bank or custodian.
0
The labor law field was of great concern to the revolutionaries, for they
were determined to escape from what they believed to be a major evil of
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capitalism, namely the hiring of labor power by contract without regard for other
considerations than profit. Dr. Gsovski has found a break from the continuity of
the past in this field in that a laborer is in many categories not a free agent to
make an employment contract where he wishes, for students who graduate from
higher schools and industrial technical schools are obliged to work at the place of
assignment. 58 Further, during the war and for ten years thereafter freedom of
choice of employment was restricted generally, for legislation required all work-
men to remain at their jobs unless released by management. 59
The legal forms of labor law have been maintained in spite of these changes
in principle. The code of 1922 required that there be a personal contract in each
employment situation. Yet, management was limited by the code in the circum-
stances in which it could dismiss, and its right to set hours and wages in bargaining
with the individual and eventually his labor union was circumscribed until in 1938
all wages and hours were set by the state. 60
Some of these limitations on freedom of labor contract have come as
natural developments in civil service relationships in many land, and it would be
hard to say that they were not a natural outgrowth of the state's assumption of eco-
nomic functions. Others, however, are far from the concept of freedom of
bargaining associated with industrial development under Imperial law, and may be
regarded as _a break in continuity.
The place of the courts in the governing process draws the major attention
of those interested in public law. Yet, the evidence on which a judgement must
be based as to whether there is continuity between the Russian Empire and the
U. S. S. R. is in controversy. A contrast between the Empire and the Soviet system
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can be offered by comparison of Samuel Kucherov's "Was independence of judicial
power achieved by the Reform? This question may be answered affirmatively but
with some re servations"61 with Andrei Vyshinsky's "From top to bottom the Soviet
social order is penetrated by the single general spirit of the oneness of the authority
of the toilers. The program of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) re-
62
jects the bourgeois principle of separation of power."
While it is on record that Article 1 of the Basic Principles of the 1864
Statutes of Judicial Institutions declared that "The judicial power is separated from
the executive, administrative and legisrative powers"63 and that the Senate upheld
the separation of judicial power, 64 there was reluctance on the part of the Tsar to
accept what he had caused to be proclaimed. Dr. Kucherov points to the exceptions
to the principle in the continuation after the 1864 reform of the ecclesiastical and
military courts and above all of the volost courts, which were responsible directly
to the Ministry of Interior. 65 It was these courts which had attracted the attention
?
of the Frenchman, Leroy-Beaulieu, because of the fact that more than three quarters
of the Tsar's subjects were under its jurisdiction. 66 To be sure their jurisdiction
was limited, but the fact that for most peasants they represented the sole court
? with which they would have relationship made them a vital part of the judiciary,
and clearly they had no pretence of independence.
The Empire found it necessary for security reasons to permit the Minister
of the Inteiior to create within the Ministry Special Boards with the power to es-
tablish open or concealed supervision over untrustworthy subjects and to exile the
most dangerous to remote places for terms up to five years. 67 It was this system
of administrative exile which attracted the attention of the first George Kennan and
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which ha-s figured so prominently in histories of the exile of such notorious persons
as Lenin, Stalin and numerous other leaders of the Bolshevik revolution.
It is hard for one trained in the thinking of American public lawyers to
conceive-of the totality of this situation as representing independence of the judicial
arm, unless one is willing to narrow the definition of judiciary to the point that
?
there are excluded the courts having to do with the daily lives of most of the people,
and the police tribunals whose action was notorious at the place where the in-
dependence of any judiciary is put to the test, namely in the sphere of political
dissent.
The Soviet concept of the place of the judiciary is admittedly vastly
different even on the surface. The constitution has subordiiiated the judiciary
completely to the Supreme Soviet as the supreme source of power, although there
has been an attempt to separate the judiciary from the administration by declaring
the judiciary independent and subject solely to the law. 68Still, the supremacy of
the legislative authority over the judiciary is openly proclaimed in contrast to the
proclamation of the Tsarist period, and this appears to break continuity.
Consideration of the exceptional role of the Soviet police with the authori-
zation69 it has had up until 1953 to judge citizens in its own tribunals and to exile
them to hard labor camps for periods up to five years, subject only to audit by
the Prosecutor General as a representative of the Supreme Soviet suggests still
further that the Soviet era has departed extensively from the spirit of the west.
Yet, it is tempting to conclude that this development had its seeds in the Imperial
system, at least to the extent that those Soviet citizens who might have been re-
volted by the excesses of the Soviet police may have been led to accept them
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during the formative stages because it seemed that the Soviet police was only
turning the tables on those who had exercised similar measures against the op-
position a few short years before. In this manner, it may be said that there was
continuity in the willingness of the mass of the people to tolerate terror becadse
the humanizing concept of a really independent judiciary with a monopoly of the
power of imprisonment did not run deep in the Russian people.
One canno?overlook in any analysis such as this the role of the Communist
Party. It_is outside the constitutional structure in a position which on paper
suggests that it is like parties in other countries, yet all the world knows the place
it has come to fill. While administrative officials are denied by Soviet law any
-
right to interfere in the decision making process of Soviet courts, the Party is
under no such prohibition. On the contrary, under party rules the members who
find themselves in any Soviet organization are duty bound to observe party dis-
cipline and to caucus on policy questions so as to devise the party position and
to see that it is adopted by the non-party members present. Westerners have al-
ready learned from a former Soviet lawyer how the party has intervened in some
cases which it has considered of great political importance to influence the court. 70
If one considers the relation of the Communist Party to the entire Soviet
judicial system, one can find in this fact the major break in continuity, for no
such monopoly party existed in the Empire. Even prior to 1906 when the Tsar
himself was a monopoly source of policy decision, he had no such disciplined and
ubiquitous corps of administrators comparable to the members of the Communist
Party. Certainly after 1906 the Tsar found himself hampered in the decision-
making role by parties in the new Duma, and his efforts to monopolize the
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situation by proroguing the Duma and ruling by decree met more opposition than
0 is possible today under Communist Party domination. Perhaps the major break
in continuity with the past as it relates to the courts and the legal system is to be
found in the emergence of the monopoly of the Communist Party and not in the
structure of legal institutions or the rules which they apply.
?
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4111
FOOTNOTES TO HAZARD
1. See Proletarskaia Revolutsiia i Pravo (1919), No. 12-14, p. 24.
2. See D. I. Kursky, Izbrannye Stati i Rechi (Moscow, 1948), pp. 70-73.
3. "Continuity" is used herein to refer to continuation of forms and functions,
and not to the continuing applicability after the Russian revolution of Imperial
statutes and codes.
4. See E. B. Pashukanis, "The Soviet State and the Revolution in Law", Lenin
et al. Soviet Legal Philosophy (tans. by Hugh W. Babb), (Cambridge,
Mass., 1951), pp. 268-280.
5. See P. Yudin, "Socialism and Law", ibid. , p. 294.
6. See Arminjon, Nolde et Wolff, Trait e de Droit Compare (Paris, 1950), I, p. 51.
7. See Rene David, Trait e elementaire de Droit Civil Compare (Paris, 1950),
p. 224.
8. See F. H. Lawson, Book Review, University of Chicago Law Review, XXI,
780-81. The same view is held by Prof. Harold J. Berman, "Yet Soviet law
is not a product of Marxian socialism alone . . . Soviet law is also a product
of Russian history. It is Russian law---just as our law is not "capitalist"
law or "democratic" law but American law:" See his Justice in Russia.
An Interpretation of Soviet Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), p. 3.
9. See Michael J. Kerley, Department of Criticism, Washington State Bar News,
VI,. 7 (February, 1952).
10. See the article "Law" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Sixth Section, Supplement
II (1955), p. 13, column 1.
11. For an analysis of the reform of 1864, see Samuel Kucherov, Courts,
Lawyers and Trials under the Last Three Tsars (New York, 1953).
12. Decree No. 1 on the Courts, November 27, 1917, (1917) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR,
No. 4, item 50.
13. See Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, No. 36657.
14. See Paul Vinogradov, Self-Government in Russia (London, 1915), p. 101.
15. Decree No. 2 on the Courts, February, 1918 (undated), (1918) 1 Sob. Uzak.
RSFSR, No. 26, item 347.
e
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Footnotes to Hazard
16. Decree No. 3 on the Courts, July 20, 1918, (1918) 1 Sbb. Uzak. RSFSR,
No. 52, item 589.
17. People's Court Act of 1918, November 30, 1918, (1918) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR,
No. 85, item 889.
18. This circular seems not to have been placed in any published collection but
was distributed in printed form directly to the courts and has been pre-
served as such with other circulars of the period.
19. iX1920-) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 100, item 541.
20. (1921) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 15, item 97.
21. Judiciary Act of 1922, October 30, 1922, (1922) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR,
No. 69, item 902.
22. See Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U. S. 581 (1899) in which the Court held that since
trial by jury had never been a necessary requisite of due process of law, a
state statute permitting trial for a capital offense by a jury of eight was not
unconstitutional.
23. Cit., supra, note 12.
24. Cit., supra, note 15.
25. See Proletarskaia Revolutsiia (1918), No. 12, p. 30.
26. ? (1918) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 53, item 597.
27. Cit., supra, note 17.
28. The -Commissar's view is given in Ia. L. Berman, Ocherki po istorii
sudoustroistva RSFSR (1924), p. 37 et seq.
29. People's Court Act of 1920, (1920) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 83, item 407.
30. See op. cit., supra, note 28, p. 55.
31. (1922) l_Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 36, item 425.
32. (1922) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 36, item 424.
33. Law of Jane 20, 1933 (1933) 1 Sob. Zak. SSSR, No. 40, item 239.
34. Art. 115.
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Footnotes to Hazard
35. See Samuel Kucherov, "The Legal Profession in Pre- and Postrevolutionary
Russia", American Journal of Comparative Law, V, 443-70.
36. Decree on the land, October 28, 1917, (1917) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 1,
item 3.
37. Decree of February 19, 1918, (1918) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 25, item 346.
38. Cit., supra, note 12.
39. Cit., supra, note 15.
40. Cit., supra, note 17.
41. To this effect see Vladimir Gsovski, Soviet Civil Law (Ann Arbor, 1948), I,
p. 273, and also Kazimierz Grzybowski, "Continuity of Law in Eastern
Europe", American Journal of Comparative Law, VI (1948), 44-48.
42. See Proletarskaia Revolutsiia i Pravo (1919), No. 11, p. 29.
43. N. S. Timasheff, "The Impact of the Penal Law of Imperial Russia on Soviet
Penal Law", American Slavic and East European Review, XII (1953), 441.
44. Idem, p. 449.
45. Idem,_ p. 462.
46. See Vladimir Gsovski, op. cit., p. 558.
47. See Milovan Djilas, The New Class (New York, 1957), p. 44.
48. See John N. Hazard, Soviet Housing Law (New Haven, 1939).
49. See John N. Hazard, Law and Social Change in the U.S.S.R. (London, 1953),
Chapter 6.
50. See Vladimir Gsovski, op. cit., p. 415.
51. Idem, p. 455.
52. Idem, p. 496.
53. Idem, pp. 486 and 494.
54. Albert A. Ehrenzweig, Negligence Without Fault (Berkeley, 1951).
55. ApriI.27, 1918, (1918) 1 Sob. Uzak. RSFSR, No. 34, item 456. 4
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Footnotes to Hazard
56. Art. 416.
57. See Gsovski, op. cit., p. 657.
58. Idem, p. 800.
59. Decree of June 26, 1940, Ved. Verkh. Soy. SSS-R, No. 20, (1940).
60. June 4, 1938, (1938) Sob. Post. SSSR, No. 27, item 178.
61. See Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers and Trials, p. 35.
62. See Andrei Y. Vyshinsky, The Law of the Soviet State (trans. by Hugh W.
Babb) (New York, 1948), p. 318.
63. See Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers and Trials, p. 33.
64. Idem, p. 34.
65. Idem, p. 35.
66. See Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians,
Eng. trans. (New York, 1894), II, p. 270.
67. Ustav o pred. i pres. prest. , Sec. 1, Notes 1 and 2. For details, see A. I.
Elistratov, Administrativnoe Pravo (Moskva, 1911), pp. 91, et seq.
68. Constitution of the USSR of 1936, Art. 112.
69. Decree-of July 10, 1934, (1934) 1 Sob. Zak. SSSR, No. 36, item 283, and
decree-of November 5, 1935, (1935) 1 Sob. Zak. SSSR, No. 11, item 84.
70. See Bois A. Konstantinovsky, Soviet Law in Action (Cambridge, Mass.,
1953).
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STAT
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THE RUSSIAN PEASANT: FROM EMANCIPATION TO THE KOLKHOZ
by
Lazar Volin
- The very selection of the year 1861, as the starting point of the present
inquiry, is symptomatic of the importance attached to the peasantry in the Russian
social fabric. This is, I am sure, not due to a mere physiocratic bias or predi-
lection. It is true that 1861 is associated with a great milestone in the historic
fate of the Russian peasant--the Emancipation Act of February 19/March 3, which
decreed the abolition of what the great Russian historian Kluchevsky characterized
as the worst form of serfdom in Europe. By the same token, however, it became
a great national landmark, ushering in a new era, justly remembered in Russian
history as that of the Great Reforms of the early reign of Alexander II, which re-
vitalized national life after the sterile reactionary regime of Nicholas I. More-
_ _
over, the dictum of Gustav Schmoller that in Europe from 1500 to 1850 the great
1
social question of the day was the peasant question, " in one form or another, has
never disappeared as a central politico-economic issue at every critical juncture
in modern Russian history, even after the peasantry ceased to be the predominant
element of -population.
Thus, the abolition of serfdom was the response of Alexander II to the
severe jolt given Russian autocracy by the humiliating military defeat in the
Crimean War of 1854-55. Half a century later the peasant question, or as it was
then called-,-. the land or agrarian question, was once more in the foreground during
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the Revolution of 1905-06 and it again emerged as an explosive issue a decade later
during the Revolution of 1917. It was also central in the transition from War
Communism to the NEP (New Economic Policy) in 1921 under Lenin, and, of course,
in the collectivization crisis of the early 1930's under Stalin. And after Stalin joined
his Georgian ancestors, this question came to the fore once more to plague the heirs
of the late dictator.
This cursory review should make it clear that the peasant question in Russia
was not settled by the emancipation, as it was in Western Europe by the Great
French Revolution and the agrarian reforms and the industrial revolution which
followed and preceded it. On the contrary, the historic contest between the Russian
peasant and the landlord, shielded by the tsarist state, continued until a complete
victory was won by the peasant in 1917, except for the NEP interlude. However,
it was followed by a new and still unended conflict, this time between the peasant
and the communist state, bent on collectivization and a rapid lop-sided industriali-
zation. And practically throughout this period the peasant has continued to be the
cinderella of the body politic, except for some transitory and sectional improve-
ments.
II
The period which began with the emancipation legislation of the 1860's and
ended with the revolution of 1917 poses a crucial question; why, having begun with
a promising agrarian reform, it ended with a peasant revolt resembling in many
respects Pushkin's celebrated "Russian mutiny--terrible and senseless." Certainly
Alexander II recognized the dilemma--agrarian reform or eventual revolution.--
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when he warned the serf-owning landlords in the beginning of his reign that it is
better to liberate serfs from above than to wait until they liberate themselves. He
saw the handwriting on the wall and hoped to forestall by emancipation a peasant
revolution, a rumbling of which was to be heard in frequent local mutinies of
serfs, which kept alive that nightmare of the serf-woner-Pugachevshchina. When
the government's intention to abolish serfdom became known one hundred years
ago (in December 1857), it was greeted with immense enthusiasm by that self-
appointed (I am not using this in any derogatory sense) idealistic and vigorous advo-
cate of the inarticulate peasants' interests?the Russian intelligentsia of all shades
of opinion, from the Slavophiles on the Right, to Liberals like Kayelin and (at that
time) Katkov in the Center, to Herzen left of Center, and even Chernyshevsky on
the extreme Left.
This enthusiasm, however, faded as the emancipation legislation, which
was to affect so profoundly the life of the liberated peasantry, began to take shape.
Not only radicals like Ogarev and Chernyshevsky damned the emancipation reform
as it finally evolved, but even Ivan Aksakov, the conservative Slavophile, was
critical. For a strong impact was exerted on the character of the new legislation
by the influential land-owning nobility. It was predominantly opposed to emanci-
pation and was bent on making the liberation process economically as painless as-?
possible to itself, when it realized its inevitability. The pressure of the landlord
interests (though in some respects divergent as between different geographiC regioiis
-
resulted in many a compromise unfavorable to the liberated -peasan
To be sure, the peasant ceased to be legally what Herzen called "baptize
property. And, what is equally important, they',-'we're---116-0iberated-1-s-laWdre.s-
?
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proletarians which, with the Russian peasant's attachment to the land, would have
been impossible in any event. The peasants, however, did not obtain all the estate
land they hoped. The land-owning nobility retained about 70 percent of its land.
Moreover, a large section of the liberated peasantry in the more fertile regions,
where land was valuable, was allotted even a smaller area than it tilled for its own
needs under serfdom; and this, despite the fact that the peasants after liberation
presumably had more time since they were not required to work for the master.
The holdings allotted were also often of poor quality and location, and lacking such
important elements as meadows (hayland.) and forests, thus necessitating the
leasing Of such lands from the former master. In these and other aspects of the
land allotment process was the genesis of that economic dependence of the liberated
peasants on their former master which, as a vestigial survival of the servile
system, persisted Long after the emancipation. Here was a source of irritation
and conflict which poisoned the liberated peasant-landlord relations.
The situation was aggravated by the financial aspects of the emancipation
reform. The peasants were saddled with a heavy redemption price for the allotted
^
land which exceeded its market value before allotment. The heavy fiscal burden
of redemption- payments and taxes, sometimes even exceeding the income from
land, beg-an early to figure as one of the chief causes of rural destitution in the
findings of official investigating commissions and of private investigators and ob-
servers during the post-emancipation era. Moreover, fiscal considerations of
extracting the burdensome redemption payments and taxes were, to a large extent,
responsible for the fact that the peasant was not made an independent land pro-
prietor -or a full-fledged citizen and that his mobility was restricted.
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Ownership of peasant land was vested, not in the individual, but in the
whole village community or mir. A peasant family- or household (krestyanskii dvor),
41
the actual farming unit to which land was apportioned, could not even refuse to
accept an allotment, however unprofitable. For taxes had to be paid under a system
of unlimited responsibility of the whole membership of the mir--whether the land
was tilled or not. Incidentally, the restrictions with which the mir land was hedged
and legally segregated from other privately owned land, were further tightened by
the Law of December 14/26, 1893.
The mir also took over much of the police authority over the peasants
which was formerly exercised by the landlords, including even the power of de-
portation to Siberia. The mir shared with the head of the household the important
power to grant or withhold permission to obtain and to renew the much coveted
passport, without which a peasant could not leave his native village for any length
of time.
It was, however, mainly the matter of the persistent and vexing tax arrears
which lead to intervention of the mir in the affairs of the individual household. To
insure payment, the mir could hire out a member of the defaulting household or
could remove the head of the household, appointing in his place a different member.
If the mix:, under the leadership of its more prosperous or more aggressive
elements, often lorded it over the average peasant, the mir and the volost' (a unit
of local self-government which comprised several village communities) in turn
_ .
were dominated by government officials, whose legal power of interference was
even increased during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The elected peasant
aldermen were "elective in name only and depend to such an extent on the local
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government bureaucracy that they cannot even think about defending the interests
of their community." As a result the better element of the village as a rule shuns
such service and the positions are occupied by "the scum of the peasant popu-
?
lation. "2 Such was the testimony gathered from various sources by an important
government investigation early in the century.
The peasants also had their own lower courts, trying--both minor criminal
and civil cases, in accordance with custom law, which "very often proved to be no
law at all, "3 it was so ill-defined and unfairly and arbitrarily administered. The
quality of the village judges was no better than that of other elective officials who
were tools of the chinovniki (government officials). Corporal punishment was re-
tained in these peasant courts long after it was abolished in the penal system of
the-general courts, which had undergone a thoroughgoing and highly progressive
reform in the 1860's.
Yet another set of limitations to which the peasants but not other classes
of population were subjected, stemmed from the customary joint family owner-
ship of the property of a peasant household, which was retained after the emanci-
pation. While it protected individual members against the improvidence of the
head of the household, it had also disadvantages for the individual. For instance,
all his earnings from whatsoever source, if he was not legally separated from
the household, were supposed to go into the corrgnon poor--a serious matter, con-
sidering the prevalence of migratory work in the overpopulated Russian village.
Even peasants who had long lived and worked away from the village were often
forced to continue their contributions to the household of which they legally re-
mained members. The weapon here was the famous Russian passport, which hung
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like the sword- of Damocles over the head of any peasant who wanted to live away
from his native village. But the traditional Great Russian large peasant family
began to feel the disintegrating impact of individualism following the emancipation.
This was manifested in numerous family divisions in spite of certain economic ad-
vantages possessed by a large peasant family. In the 1880's the government became
so alarmed over the adverse effects of family divisions that it tried to restrict
them by law. Such restriction, however, was unavailing and served only to provide
an additional source of vexation to the peasant.
It all adds up to a picture of the liberated Russian peasantry remaining
Ha peasant nation consistently segregated from the general life of the community
(state)," instead of being drawn closer to the rest of the citizenry. 4 This view has
not been seriously challenged. Writing fifty years later, so moderate a political
thinker as V. A. Maklakov likened the post-emancipation status of the Russian
peasant to a "kind of caste"5--an oppressed caste we may add- -lorded over by the
chinovniki and their stooges.
This segregation or insulation of the peasant class was enhanced by the
growing cultural lag between the town and the country. Culturally, urban Russia
made great strides during the second half of the nineteenth century with a signifi-
cant democratization and broadening of the predominantly upper class culture.
But this progress hardly touched the Russian village, which continued to live in
ignorance. Precious little was done by the tsarist government even to stamp out
wholesale illiteracy. 6 On the contrary, it did its best to hamper the educational
and cultural activities undertaken by the local self-government (zemstvo), private
organizations and public spirited individuals. The government attitude was summed
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up by a well-known authority, N. N. Kovalevsky, as follows:
The principal objective of the government was not
to spread popular education as widely and as rapidly
as possible, but to ward off some kind of a danger to
the nation because the people will acquire too much
knowledge unnecessarily through schools and books,
and will broaden their intellectual horizon. There
are still not a few persons who are convinced that
popular ignorance is the best guarantee of social
order. 7
"The access of peasants to books was hindered to the utmost by the authori-
ties; lectures and talks in the village, even when dealing with strictly specialized
subjects, met actually almost insurmountable obstacles," wrote, in 1905, the well-
known Russian economist and educator, Professor Manuilov. 8
It was the consensus of experts and observers of Russian rural conditions
at the turn of the century that the legal, social and cultural isolation of the liberated
peasantry failed to develop its power of initiative, stifled the spirit of enterprise
and tended to reinforce the natural inertia. Thus, it also contributed to the growing
economic destitution caused in the first instance by the inadequate land allotment
and heavy fiscal burden. This situation was complicated and aggravated by a tran-
sition from a self-sufficient to a money economy and by a rapid growth of rural
population without adequate outlets for the surplus manpower. These were lacking
because of slow industrial development, failure to encourage agricultural re-
settlement and what is especially important, insufficient improvement and intensi-
fication of the agricultural technique. The latter process was, in turn, retarded
by peasant poverty and the consequent %hortage of capital, by inadequate markets
for farm products, by a lack of know-how, cultural backwardness of the farm
population, and lack of agronomic assigtance.
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The idea that not all is well with the emancipated rural Russia began to
gain .ground in the public mind soon after the emancipation reform. As a matter
of fact, as we saw above, serious criticism of the reform began with its very
proclamation. Already in 1872 an official commission of inquiry into rural con-
ditions waS set up, the Valuev Commission, before which much pessimistic testi-
mony was given. Twenty years later, following the catastrophic famine in 1891,
an even gloomier view that the Russian village was in the throes of a serious
crisis, because of increasing impoverishment, was rapidly gaining wide acceptance.
The paradox of a chronic undernourishment of the peasants in a country which be-
came one of the leading exporters of grain and other foodstuffs was stressed by
numerous observers and witnesses before the official investigating commissions,
such as that established under the chairmanship of the Minister of Finance, S. Yu.
Witte. The increase in the number of peasant households lacking work horses and
the generally poor condition of peasant livestock lacking an adequate feed supply
base, the increasing parcellation of peasant holdings, piling up of tax arrears--
these were some of the other symptoms of the growing deterioration of peasant
agriculture.
If the peasant could still, with some difficulty, keep his head above water
in years of good or average harvests, he was faced with disaster when crops
failed, as they often did under Russian climatic conditions. Famine conditions,
epidemics, increased mortality, decrease in the number of livestock, including
work horses which, by striking at the sole source of farm power, did more than
anything else to undermine the very foundation of peasant farming--this is the
spectacle of the growing destitution of a famine-stricken Russian village. The
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adverse effects of such conditions were felt long after the worst of the famine had
passed. Ar-hat Kipling wrote of the Indian peasant in the 1890's could be applied to
his Russian counterpart as well: "His life is a long-drawn question between a crop
and a crop."
The chronic rural distress should not obscure the fact that there always
had been a. small layer which was economically better off than the great mass of
the peasants. Leadership in the village was often characteristic of this group and
at times also a tendency to exploit the poorer peasants through usurious loans, etc.
Economic stratification in the villages was noted, for instance, as early as 1870
by such an astute observer as Professor Engelgart in his celebrated Letters from
the Village which, incidentally, still can be read with much interest and were
recently republished by the Soviets. But economic stratification was especially
stressed since the 1880's by Marxist socialist writers on the basis of statistical
material provided by the zemstvo surveys and other sources. The Marxists were
engaged in the famous controversy witht.-he populists regarding the character of
economic development of Russia and, more specifically, the prospects of capital-
ism. The Marxists believed that they found supporting evidence for their traditional
analysis of class stratification or polarization and class struggle accompanying
capitalistic development also in the stratification process in the village, despite
the retar-ding influence of the egalitarian mir system of land tenure. However, in
their preoccupation with economic factors, the Marxists neglected other influences,
notably the demographic factor, that is the composition and the size of the family.
These, as Kaufman, Chayanov and others showed, played an important role in the
process of village stratification, larger and stronger peasant holdings being usually
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associated with larger families and vice versa.
The public discussion and all the labor of the official investigating
commissions produced copious and highly valuable material on rural conditions
in Russia for which a student of Russian agrarian history must be eternally grate-
ful. But they had not resulted in any serious corrective measures until the revo-
lution of 1905-06. To be sure the peasant had the active sympathy of the Russian
intelligentsia which, out of idealistic motives, considered it a sacred duty to help
the poverty stricken masses. As ill-paid doctors, teachers, nurses, and zemstvo
workers, the intellectuals, threw themselves unsparingly into this work, not
deterred by the discouraging opposition of the government. Famine relief especially
brought out strenuous efforts by the intelligentsia on behalf of the stricken popu-
lation. But all this devotion was a drop in the ocean of peasant need. However,
it greatly helped to keep the issue in the public spotlight, as did the sympathetic
?
interest in the peasant of the Russian literature throughout the pre-Soviet era.
The radical populist section of the intelligentsia also tried, against great
odds, to arouse the peasantry by spreading socialist propaganda in the village.
It considered the Russian peasant partly prepared to embrace socialism because
it detected a socialist germ in the institution of peasant communal land tenure,
the mir, t.r.1 which even Karl Marx gave a qualified approval. But this socialist
propaganda, even if it were not suppressed by the government, was an abysmal
failure. The peasants were not interested in socialism.
What will you do," one of the propagandists (Zhelyabov)
asked a peasant whom he thought entirely converted to
the socialist doctrine, "if you should get some five
hundred ruble?" "Well, I will open a saloon" the peasant
answered. 9
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What about the peasant attitude toward the crisis? What was his solution?
It could be summed up in two words, "more land." He saw the root of all his
difficulties in a shortage of land and his only salvation in extension-of the cultivated
area. It was easier to continue the same type of farming on a larger area than to
reorganize the system of farming on the old holdings, especially when capital and
knowledge were lacking. Moreover, some holdings were too small for any practic-
able improvement of farming. There were also historical and psychological reasons
for the peasants' attitude. They believed that only the tillers of the soil were en-
titled to land and were disappointed according to all accounts when they did not ob-
tain all the estate land on emancipation. What rankled most was the loss of the
land which they tilled as serfs on their own?the so-called otrezki (literally, cut-
off land). While they acquiesced in the new land arrangements more peacefully
than the government expected, yet they never fully accepted it as a just solution. 10
The peasants continued to dream, after emancipation, of a new partition of land
to be ordered by the kind tsar, once he was able to overcome the resistance of
the nobles and his ministers. Naturally, as the crisis deepened, they looked in-
creasingly with covetous eyes on the broad acres of the "nobles nests," which ad-
joined their narrow strips. How he could lay his hands on this land, of which he
-
considered himself unjustly deprived, became the central preoccupation of the
Russian peasant._
There was another important factor which reinforced this peasant outlook
with respect to estate land. This was the communal repartitional system of land
tenure, or as it is usually known, the mir tenure. It was the prevailing peasant land
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tenure over a large part of Russia before emancipation and was retained by the
emancipation legislation. I shall not deal here with the intense controversy, his-
torical, economic, and ideological which the mir system provoked and which did
not cease until the revolution of 1917. I would only like to point out that the so-
called scattered strip farming, for which the mir system was often criticized as
being-inefficient, was not exclusively characteristic of it, but also of the hereditary
peasant land tenure, where it existed in Russia as well as in central and western
Europe. The central feature of the repartitional mir system was that the peasant
family held its strips of land, not permanently (except for the homestead and the
attached kitchen garden) but only until the next repartition, when the holding could
change both in size and location. If the land was given up for one reason or another
by a member, it reverted to the mir which had the right to redistribute it. But the
member still retained his right to an allotment. In other words, the peasant had
.a right to a holding, but not to a particular holding, and he could not dispose of it
freely. The actual farming unit, however, was the peasant household and not the
mir as the kolkhoz is at present.
The repartitions of land kept alive in the peasant mind the idea of the
egalitarian distribution of land in accordance with the dictates of rough primitive
justice. And why should such egalitarianism stop at the boundary line that divided
the allotted from the estate lands? The peasant mind, unaccustomed to the legal-
istic niceties, saw no reason for such a segregation. With his peculiar concept
of the right to land and the practice of flexible landholding, the peasant considered
the property right of the landlords also less than sacrosanct.
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III
Until"1905 the peasants, while constantly dreaming of a new partition to
relieve their distress, were nevertheless resorting. to legal means of allaying
their land hunger. They purchased some estate land and leased a much larger
proportion, often on stiff terms. But, as we saw, abundant explosive material was
accumulating for a revolutionary conflagration. The spark was provided by the
outbreak of revolutionary disturbances in the cities in 1905 following the unpopular
and unsuccessful war with Japan. Unrest, punctuated by numerous Jacqueries,
spread through the countryside. In the new Russian Parliament, the Duma, in 1906
and 1907 the peasant deputies clamored for distribution of estate land. And again,
as during the emancipation reform half a century earlier, they were generally
supported in their objective by all the progressive elements of Russian society.
Even the moderate liberals strongly advocated distribution of a major part of the
estate lands with fair compensation of the landowners. Many of them acknowledged
that it was no panacea for Russia's agrarian ills, but only a first inevitable step
in the solution of a difficult problem, with the peasant temper being what it was.
_
Even the government itself, when the revolutionary disturbances were at their
height, toyed with the idea of such a land reform. But as soon as it felt that it
was riding out the revolutionary squall, the government, reflecting the aspirations
of the majority of the land-owning class, adamantly turned its back on all such
schemes. As an alternative to the radical and liberal proposals, reflecting peasant
demands, the energetic prime minister, P. A. Stolypin, enacted his own kind of
agrarian reform, epitomized by his famous slogan of a "wager on the strong. "
Its essence was the development of a class of independent, economically viable
-7:
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peasant proprietors who would be attached to the principle of private property,
and therefore coexist better with the estate system and act as a bulwark against
any future revolution in the village.
With this end in view legislation was passed aiming at the breakdown of
_
the mir and individualization of the peasant land tenure and other property relations.
At the same time, much greater attention was paid by the government to technical
progress in ,agriculture in its various aspects; much more was done in the way of
technical and credit assistance and encouragement of agricultural settlement in
Asiatic Russia. Also the redemption payments ceased in 1907, while the gradual
abolition of mutual collective responsibility began even earlier. The peasant could
sell his allotted land, at least to his fellow peasant. Some other legal disabilities
were removed and the Russian peasant doubtless became a freer individual than he
was prior to 1905._
Central interest in this program is held by the turnabout of the government,
with respect to mir tenure, which it zealously guarded during the preceding half
century. It had a highly unfavorable reception among the liberal and radical op-
position, including even those who were critical of the mir. It was felt that the
government's anti-mir action was too precipitate, too arbitrary and, above all,
sharply slanted in favor of a minority of the peasantry as against the great majority.
Paul Miliukov summed up the opposition attitude thus:
The Stolypin reform tried to divert peasants from
the division of the land of the nobles by the division
of their own land for the benefit of the most pros-
12
perous part of the peasantry.
Lenin, however, did not share this sentiment, common to the liberal and radical
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opposition. He wrote in 1912:
Most reactionary are those Cadets from the
5ewspaper!7Rech' and Russkiye Vedomosti,
who reproach Stolypin for the breakup
ra the mis7instead of demonstrating the neces-
sity of a more consistent and decisive breakup. 13
The peasant reaction to the new legislation may be gauged from the fact tha_t_out
of more than 10 million peasant households with communal land tenure in European
Russia, less than 2. 5 million shifted voluntarily to individual hereditary tenure
during the decade before the revolution of 1917. Another.l. 7 million were shifted
? involuntarily because of the nature of the new law. Thus, despite all blandishments
and pressure, a majority of the peasants were still clinging to mir tenure on the
eve of the revolution of 1917. However, another decade of the same tempo in the
application of Stolypin laws and the mir would be well on the way to extinction.
Whethe-r this phase of Stolypin policy contributed materially to the agri-
cultural progress, which became evident after the revolution of 1905, is debatable.
But this. should not obscure the fact that other government measures, such as those
leading to consolidation and segregation of fragmented peasant holdings, for
instance, were beneficial. Apart from any positive government action, however,
the revolutionary storm and the freer climate after 1905, despite the reactionary
character of the political regime, doubtless had an energizing effect on the village.
The vigorous growth during this period of the rural voluntary cooperative move-
ment was a significant manifestation of the new spirit of grass roots initiative.
Even-in the matter of land, though the revolutionary disturbances of 1905
were suppressed and peasant aspirations for a new partition thwarted, many land-
owners became_ insecure and anxious to liquidate at a good price their estate
_
?
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prope-rties. Thus the acquisition of estate land by peasants through purchasing,
Which began soon after the emancipation, gathered momentum after 1905, assisted
by the much expanded financial aid of a special government institution?the Peasant
Bank. To be sure, a smaller area was involved and a stiffer price was exacted
than would have been the case under the proposed liberal land reform schemes
of 1906-07. -Furthermore, the land often did not pass into the hands of those who
needed it-most. Be it as it may, close to a fourth of the estate area was purchased
by peasants between emancipation and the revolution of 1917. And on the eve of the
revolution, small peasant farmers owned approximately two-thirds of all land in
European Russia outside of the public domain, which consisted mostly of nonagri-
cultural land. Last but not least, the contribution made to an improvement of the
Russian agricultural situation by the growing industrial development and especially
by the weather, which granted four good harvests during the years 1909-13, should
not be overlooked. 14
There are good reasons to believe that if a prolonged and exhausting war,
culminating in a revolution and civil war, had not intervened, agricultural im-
provement would have continued. It is also possible that if, in conjunction with
such progress., the Stolypin policy of the "wager on the strong" could have continued
to be implemented for a period of several decades, the projected strong bulwark
against an agrarian revolution might have been created; though this is by no means
certain. Again, if a land reform could have been speedily enacted in the early
summer of 19.17 by the democratic Provisional Government--and the difficulties of
_
such an undertaking cannot be exaggerated--a peasant revolution might have been
obviated.. But all this was not to be.
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Iv
The contest of the peasant with the landlord and the tsarist state over land,
which runs like a red thread through centuries of Russian history, ended with the
long, dreamed of and dreaded total partition of land (chernyi peredel). Not only
the whole estate system was drawn into this vortex, but also the consolidated and
segregated "Stolypin" peasant holdings. It was a total triumph of the small peasant
farmer, culminating a process which began a century earlier with the emancipation.
Lenin and his followers, who did their best to inflame the peasant passions
before the seizure of power, gave official blessing- to partition in the famous Land
Decree. Here was Lenin's unabashed flirtation with the narodnik peasantophile
ideology, which he previously so often roundly condemned. It did not last long.
After a brief honeymoon, a new conflict developed between the peasant and the
Communist party-state, imbued with all its traditional Marxist suspicion and dis-
dain for small peasant agriculture as a putative breeding ground of capitalism and
an inefficient form of production. The latter notion stems from the classical
Marxist dogma of the superiority of large-scale methods of production in agri-
culture as in industry. For Lenin this doctrine was reinforced by an unbounded en-
thusiasm for that American invention, the tractor, considered ipso facto a power-
ful vehicle of collectivism. According to him, if the peasants were given 100, 000
tractors, which he acknowledged was a fantasy at the time, this would sway them
in favor of communism. He did not live to see the horrors of collectivization.
Important as these ideological factors are, there is another perhaps over-
riding cause of the perennial peasant-communist conflict. If the tsarist state was
bent on proteaing the interests of the landowning class, with which the governing
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bureaucracy was strongly blended, the Communist regime has been preoccupied
with the problem of extracting from the countryside foodstuffs for the industrial
working class, on which it bases itself, and of raw agricultural materials for the
industry. But the regime did not want (and in the early years of its existence was
unable) to_ compensate the peasant farmers properly. It preferred to exact, in a
colonialist fashion, what Stalin in a frank moment called "something of a tribute"-
a tribute, of course, on the altar of collectivist industrialization. This squeeze,
which evokes the memories of the fiscal pressure of the post-emancipation period,
was manifested in price relationships between the monopolistic state industry and
agriculture disadvantageous to the latter (the famous "scissors"), in shortages
and poor quality of manufactured goods, and in high taxes. Here is the principal
basis of the peasant-communist conflict further stimulated, of course, by ideologi-
cal considerations.
Epitomized as a "struggle for bread," it was the key to the War Communism
(1918-21) with its requisitions, when the "bony hand of hunger" gripped the cities.
It was likewise central in Lenin's decision to take a "serious and long" breathing
spell of the-NEP. Again, "the struggle for grain," intensified by the growing re-
quirements of Stalin's all-out lop-sided industrialization, was at the root of the
jettisoning of the NEP and of the horrible rural collectivization and man-made
famine of the early 1930's.
The rather short-lived NEP, viewed in retrospect, was probably one of
the happiest-periods in the Russian peasant's existence when he was more of his
own master than at any time before or since. While the land was legally national-
ized, the peasant nevertheless was actually in full control of his small holding.
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Though excessive excessive parcellation of landholdings was not conducive to efficient
farming, the peasant managed to make a living. Such grievances as he had over
taxes and prices and shortage of capital pale into insignificance compared to what
was to follow.
I shall not dwell here on the terrible ordeal of collectivization, which even
Stalin found worse than that of the war, according to his confession to Churchill.
In a tragic fashion, consolidation of the fragmented peasant holdings, which
Stolypin and his able Minister of Agriculture, Krivoshein, began in the name of
extreme individualism and which the revolution destroyed, was accomplished on
a sweeping scale by Stalin in the name of collectivism; but at what terrible cost,
human and economic.
In the kolkhoz, the peasant found himself a residual claimant to an un-
certain and meager income after the state took its large share and provision was
made for capital and current collective expanses. The method of payment, based
on the so-called "workdays," is exceedingly complicated. By a steep differenti-
ation of the remuneration system, in accordance with skill, a new economic
stratification based on modern technology (tractor and combine operators) was
created in the modern Russian village.
The Soviet rhetoric about kolkhoz democracy and self-government, proved
to be merely fiction and eye-wash. Just as the pre-revolutionary "elected"
village officers were tools of the tsarist officials, so are the kolkhoz (elected"
officers mere stooges of the Communist officials by whom they are actually ap-
pointed and replaced at will. But a member of the mir had at least a great deal
to say about the repartition of land which was usually accomplished in a democratic
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fashion. And he was, of course, his own master on his little strips within the
limits imposed by the usually common crop rotation cycle.. The kolkhoznik
(a. member of a kolkhoz), on the contrary, is fully subordinated in his work relations
to the kolkhoz management over which he actually has no control. Thus, he differs
from the ordinary Soviet factory or farm hired worker merely in that he does not
receive a regular wage and must share with his fellow kolkhozniki the considerable
risks of agricultural production.
Only on his little kitchen garden plot is the peasant a complete master.
Incidentally, a kitchen garden is allotted to the household as a whole and not to in-
dividuals, though the former may be penalized for the sins of its members. Since
kolkhozniki, in addition to their kitchen gardens, own privately a considerable
proportion of the livestock population, there is a significant dichotomy ill the
collective farm structure. Thus the peasant is a kind of a double-faced Janus,
facing both toward the kolkhoz and toward his small private farming, which is es-
pecially dear to his heart. Since the latter competes with the collective farm
economy for the labor and loyalty of kolkhozniki, the Kremlin has been looking
with a jaundiced eye upon this dichotomy, and pursuing an ambivalent policy with
respect to the "acre and a cow" farming of kolkhozniki, now restricting and now
relaxing. But the importance of this sector in the national food supply?though it
is declining--and in maintaining peasant morale, explains the reluctance of the
Kremlin to dispense altogether with this thorn in its flesh.
Regimentation of the peasantry not only has not relaxed since the war but
actually has heightened. However, it has been accompanied since Stalin's death
by an effort of the Kremlin to increase economic incentives to kolkhozniki.
,tte
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The screw has been tightened, especially since kolkhozy began to be merged into
-giant supercollectives during the last years of Stalin's life, with the consequently
increased gat) between the management and the rank and file membership. This
campaign, spearheaded by Khrushchev and continued after Stalin's death, resulted
in a decrease in the number of kolkhozy from more than 250, 000 in the beginning of
1950 to 89, 000 at the beginning of 1955. Since then a section of the peasantry be-
came even more firmly tied to the collectivist chariot, when a number of kolkhozy
were converted into or merged with large state farms or sovkhozy. In these units
the peasant becomes formally a wage-earning worker just as if he were employed
in a factory. The seriousness of this move, which has not been accompanied by
the usual Soviet fanfare and publicity, may be gauged from the fact that during the
first six months of 1957 the number of kolkhozy decreased from 84, 800 to 78, 900,
while the number of state farms correspondingly increased from 5, 099 to 5, 773.
The trend is likely to continue, though the pace may be slower. It will depend upon
-
the readiness of the Soviet government to replace with a regular wage the kolkhozy
remuneration-system under which the peasant bears all the risks without any
actual voice in the management. As for the kolkhozniki, the shift to sovkhozy is
probably not unwelcome to a great majority, provided they retain their little
kitchen gardens and livestock.
The conversion of kolkhozy to sovkhozy was preceded by the transfer to
the permanent staffs of state machine-tractor stations of tractor drivers and some
other categories of skilled kolkhozniki who formerly were seasonally employed by
them. But kolkhozy continues to pay part of their compensation. The new Soviet
"wager on solikhozy" would eliminate also the machine-tractor stations and with
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them the dualism in collective farm management which engendered much friction
and inefficiency.
In any event, we are probably witnessing the last stages in the proletarian
transformation of the Russian peasantry,. which so long and so tenaciously held
on to the land and even under serfdom coined the slogan: "We are yours, but the
land is ours. " The peasants' status in Soviet society is well described by an old
kolkhoznik in a conversation with a Soviet bureaucrat in Nikolai Zhdanov's fine
short story, "A Trip to the Homeland" in the celebrated second volume of
Literary Moscow: "You then are the bosses, we--the producers." How stable is
a social structure in which peasant producers "have nothing- to lose but their
chains" (as Karl Marx said of the proletarians), is another question.
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FOOTNOTES TO VOLIN
1. Volkwirtschaftslehre, v. I, p. 520. Quoted by J. H. Clapham, The Economic
Development of France and Germany 1815-1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1921)
13. 1.
2. S. N. Prokopovich, Mestnye Ludi o Nuzhdakh Derevni (St. Petersburg, 1904),
p. 99.
3. Paul Miliukov (Milyoukov) Russia and Its Crisis (Chicago, 1906), p. 343.
4. I. M. Strakhovskii, in Krestyanskii Stroi (St. Petersburg,- 1905), I, p. 388.
5. "The Agrarian Problem in Russia before the Revolution", The Russian Review,
IX (1950).
6. According to the census of 1897, 76 percent of the whole rural working popu-
lation (20-59 years old) and 63 percent of the men were illiterate. Even among
the local agricultural improvement societies, which, in the words of an official
publication constituted the "cultural advance guard of the village," illiteracy
reached 15-24 percent, according-.to an investigation by the Ministry of
Agriculture in 1912. A high correlation was observed between literacy of the
peasant farmers and agricultural improvements, such as, for instance, intro-
duction of grasses in rotation.
7. Prokopovich, op. cit., p. 54.
8. A. A. Manuilov, Pozemel'nyi Vopros v Rossii (Moscow, 1905), p. 47.
9. Paul Miliukov, op. cit., p. 408.
10. A. A. Kornilov, Krestyanskaya Reforma (Moscow, 1905), p. 175. It was,
however, by no means a submission without a protest, inasmuch as there were
more than 1100 cases of disorders and uprisings in different villages during
the-two years 1861-63. V. Gorn, Krestyanskiya Dvizheniya za Poltora Veka
(Moscow, 1909), p. 29.
11. Un-der this system, a holding consists not of one tract of land but is divided,
often into numerous small noncontiguous strips.
12. "A Republic or a Monarchy", Krestyanskaya Rossiya (Prague, 1923), IV, p. 54.
13. Sochine-niya, XVI, p. 14.
14. The only poor harvest wa? in 1911.
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EDUCATION: ORGANIZATION AND VALUES SINCE 1917
by
George Z. F. Bereday
One of the most distinguishing features of American education is the fact
that it is locally controlled and thus tied directly to the life of the community that
supports it. The relationship of the school to the people is a two way relationship.
At any time through the school board, PTA, pressure groups, newspapers and the
more general web of informal relationships, the public directly influences the nature
of school instruction. At the same time through a myriad of ways of which the
moulding of the opinions of children is the most obvious, the school in turn has its
impact upon the social life around it. The school and the community are in a fluid,
flexible partnership. Their fate is one of a never-ending but direct mutual ad-
justment.
By contrast, the Soviet school has to function in a more complicated fashion.-
Officially it is the agent and exponent of the policies of the government. It
represents to the people the established ideology. It hands down official directives
and training. Though the actual features of organization provide for separation of
responsibility between the several ministries of higher education, culture, and edu-
cation and for decentralization at the union and republic level, the practical super-
vision of the party has never put into question the dependence of the schools on
central direction. 1They are, in an oft repeated phrase, a political weapon. They
are emissaries of the authority from above. They do not ask, they tell what is to be
done.
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But that is only one half of the story. Even under police state no people
are wholly passive. None can be forced or cajoled into a position of mere re-
cipients of order. Even the Russian people, long-known for their acquiescence to
authority, have now been wrenched through education and advancing industry from
the millenium-old torpor. Even under central direction the ruled masses are
bound to write into education aims and meanings of their own. Faced with authori-
tarian bureaucrats and teachers dispensing the will of the state, they are apt to in-
vent ingenious measures to circumvent it and to adapt to their practical needs the
official directives handed down to them. Even more significantly they may prevent
enforcement of policies through passive resistance. To each pressure they respond
with counter-pressure.
In Soviet education both the government and the people use the schools for
purposes of their own. When these purposes coincide, harmonious cooperation
does occur. But when they diverge, the schools become a scene of demonstrable
tensions. The relationship is thus not two-ways as in the United States, but three-
ways. The scho?ols are caught in the middle between the state and the public and
their respective interests. Like the American schools, they carry out their task
amidst frequent conflicts of interests. But unlike our schools they serve as buffers
between the contending partners, not as partners in the enterprise.
This has significance for the functioning of education. From the beginning
-
educational values, and the organization of schools which manifest them, have been
affected not by one-but by two vectoral forces. In broadest generalization the aim
of the Soviet government was to educate for altruism. It is as a corollary of this
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overall objective that the schools were made to serve the secondary aims with
which we are familiar: the teaching of industrial skills and political indoctrination,
both as a shortcut to economic progress and as-a. classless panacea: But while the
government pursued these aims, the Soviet people developed at the same time a
?
-somewhat different though familiar orientation. Perhaps, taking too seriously the
?
promises of their leaders, they seem to have been- seized with the ambition to attain
a better life for themselves and their dependents. Certainly cultural hunger and
ceaseless activity to win economic betterment appear to be a dominant motivating
force behind the mass demands for more education.
These two basic aims imposed upon the schools by their masters and their
customers are not only irreconcilable in theory but often hard to fit together in
practice. One will easily g-rant that as a theoretical premise the official doctrine
of education for-selfless service is ethically sound. It is, in fact, merely a re-
statement of the Taoist, Buddhist, and early Christian doctrine. If every member
of society could concentrate on being useful to others, all would vastly benefit
_from the_multiplicity-of efforts thus accruing to them. In this sense the regime's
call is not only Eompatible but has been responsible for galvanizing the masses
into action.
But in practice, once the awakening took place, Soviet authorities found it
hard to convince its people, bent on speedy satisfaction of increasing personal
wants, that an indefinite postponement of this satisfaction will bring it more
securely within,their reach. Classical economics has always taught us that an
economic system based on self-interest depends on the willingness of investors to
prefer future "deferred" consumption over the satisfaction of present wants.
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An altruistic system seems to have difficulty with this r%Ile, The-more persuasive
the official slogan about the better collective future, the more determined seem
individuals in demanding-an immediate fulfilment in the present. T-hus the cleavage
between the short-range and long-range goals in education is a perennial problem
everywhere and certainly in the Soviet Union. At all times the schools stress to
their pupils the -imperative necessity. of serving the state. At all times people re-
spond by trying-to serve principally themselves.
There exists thus and has existed throughout Soviet history, a potential
source of conflict between the teacher, as symbol of the state and the taught, as
symbol of the individual. But inevitably there has also taken place a degree of ac-
commodation to each other. The system must develop along lines of compromise
acceptable, albeit somewhat gingerly, to both parties,
Through trial and error and through now proverbial zig-zags, no less ap-
plicable to education than to other spheres of Soviet life, the official policy has
represented a series of surrenders to popular will, and a subsequent series of
balancing attempts to reassert the threatened Communist doctrine. Faced with
the daily lessons of what makes people "tick, " the regime was forced to modify
it uncompromising altruistic stand in favor of incentives designed to supply more
realistic motivation. Instead of materialistic samaritanism there had to be some
concession to renascent religions feelings and only periodical revival of atheistic
campaigns to keep matters in equilibrium. Instead of world communism there
had to be patriotism and Russian nationalism punctuated by a revival of international
campaigns and:the stepping up of interest in ethnic minorities. Instead of pro-
gressivism in education there had to be the vacillation between strictly formal
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college-oriented curriculum and periodical readjustments in favor of politechni-
zation.
On the other hand, the Soviet people too, had, of course, to accommodate
themselves to the communist ideological scheme. Sometimes, though one suspects,
less often and less blatantly than is assumed in the West, this has taken the form
of a mere careerist lip service. More often a :enuine search for ideals was born
of that mysticism that has been somewhat exaggerately proclaimed the Russian
birthmark, ever since the romantic writers discovered that the peasant had a soul.
This search was channeled into varying degrees of dedication to the communist
experiment. It does not take much imagination to understand how to a peasant-
born student, and a significant proportion of students in each generation come from
the countrzy.,...the opening vista of a personal career becomes identified with the ex-
citement of building a new and wonderful fraternal state.
It is submitted as a central the'Slis of this paper that these collisions and
accommodations between the postulates of official theory and the requirements of
unofficial practice supply a meaningful clue to the understanding of the process of
continuity and change in Soviet education. What follows will simply illustrate
under two categories the various permutations resulting from the meeting of these
two formative influences.
II
The general humanitarian concern of the Marxist doctrine for the education
of the underdog, ingeniously coupled with the industrial ambitions of Soviet policy-
makers, have combined to render the expansion of educational opportunities one
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of the major and-most cherished aims of the communist program. From the start
it has been pressed for relentlessly and boasted about incessantly. The Soviet
Union became, like the United States, committed to the belief that to evoke and
maximize the dynamic potential of the country, no less than full-scale education for
all was needed. The cultural and industrial opportunities thus created had, as
could have been predicted, a spiral effect. Growing-opportunities for education
stimulated the economy which in turn demanded more skills and provided fresh in-
centives. It is ce-rtain that the regime could not have survived the decimation of
its educated class by the revolution and later by the purges had not the machinery
of education been geared to speedy provision of replacements. It is equally certain
that the Soviet economy could not have made its spectacular advances had not the
need for enlarged cadres been anticipated by educating surpluses of specialists.
This policy of expansion has been pushed ahead on several f-ronts. Strenuous
efforts were made first of all to abolish adult illiteracy. An ambitious program of
supplying first primary and then secondary education to the whole population of
the relevant age group were also made. Finally, the buivld-up of the system of
higher education has recently received first priority of attention. To these we
must add the quite remarkable activities now symbolized by the jurisdiction of the
Ministry of Culture. The provision of libraries, the advances of theater arts and
the film industry, the development of sports, the activism of youth organizations
these are among the most successful and most obvious of all Soviet achievements.
It has been said, with some reason, that the cathedral or parish church dominates
the view in a European town. In an American town the high school first attracts
the eye. It is the pioneers palace that is assigned the choicest location and
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building in the Soviet counterpart.
The liquidation of illiteracy was a humanitarian, economic and even poli-
tical necessity. It is for the last-mentioned reason that it received the earliest
attention. person who could not read was beyond the easy reach of communist
propaganda." As described by George Counts, party organizations, schools, and
voluntary civic action-were immediately mobilized to deal with the problem. It
was, of course., understood that a literate public need not be a receptive public.
Educated people might be ill-fitted to the concept of monolithic police state. But
here modern techniques of thought control and mass persuasion were expected to
provide the necessary safeguards. In addition, the growing school system was ex-
pected to provide for the young, what Alex Inkeles referred to as a "predisposition
to believe. "? Having founded effectively means of total control of the communication,
the Soviet rulers could proceed without further restraint with the business of re-
claiming the vast masses of people from the cultural neglect of the earlier era.
In actual fact, as has been pointed out often, in doing so they merely reduplicated
the plans of reform that have been formulated in pre-revolutionary days.
The Major impact of the illiteracy campaign came in the first two decades
of the regime. Lenin's first decree "On the Liquidation of Illiteracy" in 1919
. .
marks its beginning. The Soviet pronouncements of the mid-thirties mark its of-
ficial termination. From that time onward the regime has considered its task
wholly accomplished. Since World War II Soviet statistical sources refrained
from giving any relevant figures. In the forthcoming World Survey of Primary
Education to be published by UNESCO, the Kremlin government has firmly declared
the Soviet Union "a country of complete literacy. "4 An official bibliography
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published in 1956, lists among forty-two sources on liquidation of illiteracy, none
published after 1935.5
But even this basic educational ambition is subject to some limiting-quali-
fications. In view of the fact that as late as 1926 the figures of illiterates over 15
years of age were given as 71.4 per cent in Asian Russia, and 44.5 per cent in
European Russia6 the magnitude of the Soviet achievement is impressive by any
standard. But one passage will suffice to show that the process was not accomplished
without considerable tensions.
In November 1929, eighth and ninth-grade students
were taken from their studies and sent into rural
areas on a "culture campaign" to "liquidate illiteracy. "
Each of these "soldiers of culture" was assigned twenty
or twenty-five illiterate peasants, to whom he had to
teach reading and writing for three months. This
broadly conceived measure did not yield the expected
results. It failed because the "teachers" were inex-
perienced and often quite helpless, and because the
"students" sabotaged the studies, regarding them as
a measure preparatory to collectivization. I
Some such tensions must persist even today. As a result international sources
judge the Soviet Union at present to have between five and ten per cent of adult
illiteracy, although some of it may be due to the 1940 territorial annexations. 8
Also in the -c-ase of ethnic minorities, literacy figures refer to their national
languages, for some of which an alphabet has only been created two decades ago,
and who by sometimes refusing to learn Russian cut themselves from literacy in
any real sense. Finally, there are no available figures on semi-literacy and
lapses into illiteracy, the commonplace band of collectors of illiteracy statistics,
no doubt_ applicable also to the Soviet situation. Even simple literacy legislation
can be defied, it seems, with impunity.
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Coupled with the elimination of adult educational problems there came the
provisions for education of young people. At all levels, pre-school, primary,
secondary and higher, the authorities have launched upon programs of expansion.
An employment of a large number of working- mothers necessitated, first
of all, an expansion of pre-school education. In 1955 more than five million
children under seven years of age attended some sort of school. Between 1928 and
1955 those in nursery schools increased from 62,000 to 906,000; those in kinder-
garten from 130,000 to 1,713,000.9 Pre-school education made, thus, a steady
if somewhat checkered gain. It started its growth soon after the revolution and
made headway until 1936. At that time it began to decline. This decline applied
particularly to the countryside and continued until 1953 when a new campaign was
launched to set the matters right. Up till now the situation has not, however,
reached the point of saturation. The fault may be the government's but it is ac-
centuated by-the obstacles presented by the people. In examining the causes for
this, one cannot escape a sense of deeper similarity between reasons adduced in
1927 when
...people were afraid not that their children would
be badly treated, but, on the contrary, that they
-would be treated too well, spoilt and made unfit for
eternity. They were also afraid that their children's
crosses would be taken from them, that they "would
be made godless" and that the family would be broken
up. 10
and those given in 1953:
The nature of agricultural work makes permanent
kindergartens appear less necessary, and the
majority of collective farms have merely organized
-seasonal playgrounds during summer. As can be
- well-imagined, the educational work carried on in
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these playgrounds is often of a very low standard,
if indeed it is carried on at all. 11
In spite of-centralization the attitudes of the people seem to determine _here, as
everywhere else, just what. progress precisely is achieved.
In the area of compulsory education a more determined advance took place.
At the level of primary and secondary education, often an initial decade of detours
and experimentation, a unified ten-year school has solidly emerged. This
"principal school" is being steadily expanded. By 1950 final declarations of having
accomplished universal seven-year education (first planned for 1937) began to be
made. By 1956 with some qualifications, education for all until the age of fourteen
had become a fact. Secondary education for all was to follow by 1960. The number
of schools between 1922/23 and 1955/56 (after allowance has been made for the
1939 increase of territory) has exactly doubled and now stands at 213, 000. The
number of pupils for the same period, (though not weighted for population increase)
more than quadrupled and now stands at over thirty million. 1 2The provision of
educational opportunities of this magnitude is certainly a remarkable feat. Com-
pared with-it the American figures for the same period though only roughly com-
parable (spectacular increases occurred in the United States in an earlier era)
have increased only from 25 million to some 30 million pupils. The English figures,
too, show only a 30 per cent increase in the number of pupils, although the number
of schools-increased by 60 per cent.
Sin-3-Ear spectacular advances were pressed for and it seems attained in
higher-edudation. At the time of the revolution there were some ninety institutions
of higher learning in all Russia. Moscow alone now possesses that many.
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1,867,000 students now attend Soviet institutions as full time or correspondence
students, as against an average of 200,000 in the first decade of the Soviet regime.
American sources even more than Soviet sources have lately fully publicized this
sector of expansion. The Soviet Union after reorganization and consolidation of
some types_of?teachers colleges has now 765 institutions of higher learning of which
33 are universities. The training of post-graduate students, of whom there are
only some 30,000, takes place partly in these and partly in research centers out-
side the universiti 2 S .
It is obviously in the interest of the regime to expand educational opportuni-
ties as rapidly as possible. But in this area as in all others considerable diffi-
culties intervene.
In the primary sector, the compulsory seven-year attendance has shown it-
self to be a persistent headache. In a study published in France, I. and N.
Lazarevitch include ten pages of quotations from Soviet press indicating sub-
13
stantial non-attendance in various regions between 1948 and 1953. A. Korol,
to whom we owe the most recent and thorough account of Soviet education, de-
scribes the situation after 1954 as being characterized by "substantial lapses
here and there. "14
The accounts of such lapses continue to appear in the Soviet
press without interruption. 15Obvious building difficulties have also intervened.
Their shortage has been such that the length of the school day had to be affected.
In the words of N. Goucharov, substantiated by other official sources, "we are
still compelled to have two and sometimes three shifts to accommodate the 29
million school children from seven to seventeen in attendance. "16 Many schools
continue to use buildings rented from other enterprises and the quality of
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instruction by teachers, very often commanded into the service, continues to be,
particularly in more remote regions, of an unsatisfactory standard.
CoMpulsory secondary school attendance has been originally planned for
1960. But here as elsewhere the prospects must linger behind the promises.
There is no point discussing the fulfilment of the latter before the date due. There
has at any rate occurred an obvious and substantial increase of places at senior
secondary 17 level. But it is enough to note the phrases "as a:whole" and "in the
main" upon which the official spokesmen have now fallen when describing the hopes
of the program. To wit:
During 1951-55 the transition to universal ten-year
schooling from the age of seven to sixteen or seven-
teen was achieved as a whole in the capitals of the
republics and in large cities and regional, territorial,
and large industrial centers. At the present time, the
organs of public education are confronted with the task
of effecting universal ten-year education in the main
in the remaining towns and rural localities by 1960.
This task is being accomplished. 18
The weak spots of a policy of expansion so vigorously pursued cannot be
explained merely by inefficiencies of administration. More relevant answers must
be sought in the adjustment of the people. On the whole the program of expansion
with its promise of enlightenment and career did enlist an enthusiastic support of
the Soviet masses. A reader of official discussions, of refugee accounts, and of
reports by visitors is invariably struck by the atmosphere of remarkably universal
fervor and activity. But even though expansion is the one phase of the educational
scene on which the government and the people agree, its failures must be explained
by the existence of two important groups. Instead of a clear-cut educational policy
ideally conceived and carried out without obstacles we find a school program
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embattled between those who want to ignore it and those who find it inadequate.
Absenteeism) apathy and hostility to teachers and education abound-on one side.
On the other-side the enthusiastic demands for more educational opportunity tend
to outrun the need for educated top-level men and the government's means in terms
of buildings, teachers and equipment to satisfy mass ambitions. That the first
group is diminishing-, while the second is increasing- can be taken as measure of
Soviet et-forts and successes. These problems nevertheless exist, and as such are
an illustratioh of the difficulties incurred in systems in which educational policy is
not a simple index of local energ:y.
The history of Soviet education is partly the story of a continuous battle of
the regime against the apathy and recalcitrance of the masses. The peasant, from
the cunning- muzhik who outwits his social superiors in the old folktales, to Arthur
Koestler' s prisoner who refused state injections, presented the earliest obstacle
to speedy implementation of policy. Later, in the period of political terror there
was also a notable reluctance to study since too much education bestowed onerous
(and dangerous) responsibilities. To this attitude there now have been added eco-
nomic overtones. They are, perhaps, best exemplified by a comment of a young
nibonicho worker:
I have already bought an accordion in the second-
hand store and soon I'll get a motorcycle. That's
enough for me. I pull down nearly 1000 rubles a
month. But the main thing is that I do my work
and when I finish I am free. Studying means getting
stuck on a stipend of 300 a month at best. That is,
if you do well. And you become an engineer and are
appointed a chief. The money is about the same as
I am making now and the responsibility is enough
to send you to the grave. Why should I? No possible
' reason. Ridiculous. 19
q???
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Soviet educational authorities have to wage a constant battle with people who
drag their feet whether actively or passively. But it is probably true to say that the
majority of the people threaten the regime with an opposite attitude. The respect
for culture and idealistic quest for learning has characterized the Russians even
in the pre-Soviet era. But more overwhelmingly the almost overnight creation of
new jobs for-which the modern state had to find men with training-introduced a tre-
mendous pressure for education. The transition from rural to city life exercises
in all cultures a powerful attraction to youth of ambition. Rural youth crowd into
cities and combined with urban youth and their parents exercise powerful pressures
for more educational opportunity.
The result has been quite vitiating. Beset by proverbial difficulties in
buildings, unprepared teaching staffs and immediate need for manpower, the au-
thorities are forced to limit the pressure by pushing up standards of selectivity.
But this tools a double edged sword. There have recently been midical protests
which forced the authorities to abolish a. number of competitive examinations and
to soften others in the interest of the health of the pupils. The false grading of
pupils to enable them to pass has become so obvious as to have worked itself even
into Dudintsev's fiction. 20The pressure for admission to overcrowded universities
and colleges has reached notorious proportions. 21A recent news item reports the
dismissal of several university officials for altering entrance records so as to
enable students to enroll without complying with the regulations requiring health
22
and two year labor certificates as prerequisites of admission. It is, indeed,
quite a striking spectacle to see the regime, intent on pioneering expanded edu-
cation, having to- fight both advance guard and rear guard action with its people.
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It is the efforts of the government that give this advance a sense of direction. But
it is the combined attitudes of the people that dictate the actual rate of advance.
It is clear that amidst the two the school acts merely as a shock absorber.
III
The character of the schools is even more clearly illustrated by the second
example - the impact of official and unofficial pressure upon the curriculum. In
particular, two aspects of instruction: the issue of diversity and the history of
methods will serve to show the confluence and the divergence between planning and
execution of government directives.
Before examining the historical shuttle between progressivism and form-
alism, it is relevant to remember the postulate of one unified school system
which the original Soviet theory seemed to imply. The ideal of a single ladder of
education for all persists as an educational theme. In fact, Soviet and American
--
practice is closer to this theme, than the practice of any other country. Not only
were all citizens to be educated in common schools, but they were to be educated
by and large-in the same type of schools. Hence the basic design of a ten-year
school extending from 7 to 17, to embody eventually the entire age group. Hence,
probably also, the explanation for only five branches of learning in higher edu-
cation. In technicums and higher institutions, at which professional diversifi-
cation was inevitable and has, in fact reached exaggerated proportions, steps have
recently been taken to reduce the number of specialists and of faculties within
22 -
them.
This-policy has on the surface succeeded admirably well.
_ ?
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In Moscow or Irkutsk, Russians or Buryats, boys
or girls in corresponding grades follow the same
curriculum prescribed by the Ministry of Public
Education and study identical subjects, following
uniform syllabi and, except for the language in
which they are written, identical "approved" text- -
books. Thus in theory, each intermediate level
(elementary, after 4 years at age 11; "incomplete
secondary, " after 3 more years, at age 14) and
the terminal level, after graduation from the
tenth grade at age 17, are all clearly definable as
23
to the scope and subjects of instruction they imply.
The bulk of the school population studies today in institutions that are as identical
in their organization as possible. Even in the sector of special schools, the au-
thorities tend to move towards reintegration with the general system as soon as
they have fulfilled their special mission. The disappearance of the Rabfaks, the
reintegration of the two-year teachers institutes into the full four-year pedagogical
institutes and the occasional reference to the temporary nature of labor reserve
schools24 supply instances of this general tendency.
But it is one of the major tenets of modern educational theory that a system
catering to vast masses of population cannot withstand pressures for a great
variety of offerings. In confirmation of-this, the basic schools design became
from the beginning the subject of persistent demand for greater diversification.
In a system of totalitarian education people cannot, of course, create private
schools, although cases of private tutoring to supplement official training have
occasionally been reported. But through various agencies of public administration
special interest groups have succeeded in carving out of the main trunk of edu-
cation special purpose schools particularly suited to their needs. Furthermore
they can exercise steady and intangible pressure to force the government itself
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to recognize the need for diversified offerings. These two tendencies have long
been at work to change the profile of Soviet education.
With the advances of universal secondary education one may predict that
the senior secondary school, hitherto planned as comprehensive, will be subject to
pressures to compartmentalize. Soviet psychologists have been increasingly
pressing for a cuiriculum adapted to individual differences and thus likely to secure
25
the conditions for the optimum development of every child. It is quite likely that
the expansion-in the number of technicums conceived as alternatives to senior
secondary schools will continue more rapidly. At least, it appears that the author-
ities are determined not to have these converted into post-secondary schools al-
though latest regulations provide for entry (with different examinations) for both
the graduates of the seven year and the ten year schools. 26
Party, military, and special professional schools such as ballet schools,
university schools for the intellectually able, and schools of art and music, also
come under the heading of diversification accepted by the government as inevit-
able and useful. Like the recently created boarding schools, they obviously serve
_
legitimate interests in which the state has a significant stake. But it would be
interesting to examine their student composition. One might see how far over
the years they havebecome the means of supplying better training as distinct
from simply different training, to special groups which under the guise of special
service give privileged treatment to privileged children. Even the boarding schools
which do not now seem to have an elite character, though they were originally
"
highly suspect, 27 mayin time acquire such a character if their physical plants
improve.
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More significant than the special purpose schools are the schools created
by specific institutions. These are not necessarily vocational schools. Indeed,
several ministries and single plants operate trade schools to ensure the supply of
sorely needed skills for which there is a never-ending competition between various
0
agencies of production. But often they run, instead, schools of a general type
sponsored in order to ensure good education for the children of their employees.
Thus, Suvorov and Nakhimov officers schools and railway schools seem to be re-
28
stricted to children of officers and railway workers respectively. Cases of
factories taking under their patronage specific public schools and obtaining privileged
treatment for the children of their employees have also been reported.
But perhaps the schools for defective and delinquent children deserve the
greatest attention as proof of the pressures for diversification. A social theory
based on work for rapid progress and on subordination of individual welfare to that
of society was likely, in spite of professions of over-all altruistic aims, to produce
harsh rules for education of marginal children. Certainly in education at large
such rules resulting in long hours of study and strict examinations made them-
selves felt as soon as the initial period of experimentation gave way to an established
school order. In the field of delinquency the same rules found expression in the
provisions of the law which, contrary to Western practice, regard criminals over
the age of fourteen, and in some cases over twelve, not as juveniles but as adults. 29
In the area of "defectology" this was translated into the theory that the problem of
rehabilitation is primarily the problem of rendering the handicapped fit and skillful
enough to participate in industrial production. Hence, a scornful reference to
bourgeois "idealistic theories and religious-philanthropic principles" and
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concentration instead on "socialist humanism. "30 By and large the trend of official
Soviet theory has been to refuse to regard special education as a mere problem of
caretaking. Only the needs of the expanding economy and the occasional propaganda
value seemed to justify efforts in this direction. But in this area, too; the pres-
sures of the population and of inspired individuals exercised a steady modifying
influence.
The figure of A. S. Makarenko looms large in the history of Soviet education
for delinquents. It is well known that until after his death his efforts were dis-
paraged and his theories disputed. Only very slowly his contentions that education
of delinquents, as indeed, all education, must begin with the individual, that it
must match the demands on him by respect for him, that the vision of personal
happiness is an indispensable educational incentive, and that the group must support
the individual to command his allegiance, has gained ascendency. Such propositions
for reclaiming delinquents in a system in which law violators were regarded as
antisocial elements fit only for elimination, naturally could not easily gain as-
cendency. But the success of Makarenko's work with delinquents, coupled with the
failure in other similar establishments in the twenties, has proved to be an opening
wedge. As a result detskie domy and detskie sady grew in number and respecta-
bility. Moreover, Makarenko's ideas began their penetration into other forms of
school practice. For instance, the new boarding schools are experimenting with
his idea of vertical grouping of children into all-age "collectives. "31
Most of
Makarenko's works are now available in English. 32Their arguments and con-
victions are a testimony to the potential strength of individual opinions upon the
official colossus.
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The expansion of special education for the physically defective might also
be interpreted as a result of the impact of popular opinion. Thanks to it a network
of special schools for the blind, deaf, and mentally retarded is making its increasing
appearance. Model schools such as these are now pointed to with pride as examples
of official achievements. But remarkably less is said about the actual saturation
of the country by them. The official position still is that these schools exist for
those children who can demonstrate ability to improve. "If after three years at a
special school the pupil has shown no progress, he either is to be returned to his
parents or sent to a special home. "33 Little is known about the fate or care of
such rejects. There is increasing information on medical activities and treatment,
but as yet not enough educational research to determine the degree of overall im-
provement. The best guess is that popular pressure is increasingly successful in
reasserting the original humanitarianism, promised by the regime in theory but
actually minimized in practice.
The history of the Soviet curriculum, no less than the struggle for di-
versity, reflects the conflicts of values in communist education. On one hand,
the collectivistic school obviously demands and exacts vigorous efforts. On the
other hand, its vast and expanding ramifications inevitably bring about fresh re-
laxations and dilutions. Every student of Soviet education is familiar with this
perennial dichotomy. The official Soviet endeavors have always concentrated on
ensuring maximum learning. In practice, in spite of unusually careful legislation
and inspection they have at several points been constrained to accept much less
than perfection.
The first well known effort of the Soviet curriculum to elicit maximum
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results was rriade wholly in the progressive direction. The traditional curriculum
inherited from Tsarist times was officially swept away in favor of "complex
themes." The present wave of hostility against progressive ideas, or perhaps
more properly, against their abuse, has tended to obscure the fact that in choosing
progressivism, the early Soviet leaders did not simply indulge in whims of extreme
liberalism. They earnestly hoped, by reorganizing traditional subject methods, to
break with the dead weight of the past and to ensure the maximum of creative
learning. There is certainly thought and system in the general plan of studies of
that period as reported by Luigi Volpicelli:34
Nature
Work
Society Year of
Studies
Seasons, elements
of physical
geography.
Air, water, sun. -
Domestic uses of
vegetation and
animals.
Elementary notions
of physics, chemis-
try, agriculture,
industry, mines, _
means of transpor-
tation.
Geography of the
USSR and other
countries.
Life and work of a
family in the village
or in the city.
Life and work of the
village or of the
urban precinct in
which the students
live.
The economy of the
region.
Economy of the USSR
and other countries.
The family as a 1
social unit in re-
lation to school.
Social insti-
tutions of the
village or of
the city.
Present and past
institutions of
the region.
3
Political and social 4
regime of the USSR
and other countries
in the past.
The progressive system of training might well have proven to be logical
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and effective in the long run. Instead it has failed to establish itself, although so
_
many other features of Russian life were at the same time radically and success-
fully transformed. Its eclipse must be first and foremost attributed to the re-
sistance of the people. Not only old time teaching methods were persisted in by
conservative teachers and the more obscure communities. There was a steady
mounting pressure of public opinion in favor of "solid" training. The central tenet
of progressivism is, of course, that people are inherently good, and that, given
opportunity, they will develop for the best. But in practice its application has
-
shown that knowledge is simply power which both good and evil pupils can apply for
ends of their own. The appearance of the bad by-products of progressivism -
the unlearned, personally disorganized, and yet vocal students, has alienated the
Soviet public and publics elsewhere against-the central idea. In the circumstances
the workability of the scheme never had a chance to prove itself fully. Thus, in a
spectacular and probably not altogether palatable reversal, the Soviet state had
to throw its weight on the side of the traditional type of education. Stalin's ac-
cession and his new methods of government are commonly and with reason given
35
as the immediate cause of this change. But in a deeper sense that arbitrary
action only confirms the fact that under progressive system people were found
too undisciplined to do the official bidding. Progressivism was defeated not only
because it failed to_ educate. It was banished because it failed to teach people to
obey.
-
. _
But the human situation also frustrated the new formal educational efforts.
This is something that Western observers are only now beginning to admit or
realize. Armed by the support and directives of the state, the school immediately
_
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became a giant tester and grader. It became a stern and discriminating sieve.
_
It became an originator of tensions. As such, it could not elicit an undue show of
enthusiasm from the population.
1
First, the selective function of education embroiled it again with the
parents, on the one side ambitious for their children's preferment, and on the
other pressed by the school to punish severely all lapses from industry: 36
?
?
Secondly, as descriptions and even paintings of school life abundantly indicate, edu-
cation became a scene of formidable social frustration. The children, often driven
to get ahead, became victims of the necessity to get good grades. This has turned
them into jittery crammers. Thirdly, formalistic training immediately projected
shcool life into the realm of recitation and theory, with all the concomitant loss
of touch with practicality, which such methods are now well known to imply. One
simple example given by Krushchev will suffice to illustrate this loss of per-
spective:
Moscow is the seat of three oceanographic and
marine research institutions - the Marine Hydro-
Physical Institute, the Institute of Oceanology of
the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of
Oceanography of the Hydro-Meterological Service,
and two mining institutes - one under the U. S. S. R.
Academy of Sciences and the other under the
Ministry of Coal Industry. Isn't that a bit too much
for the Moscow Sea and the Vorobyovi Hill
(Laughter, applause. )37
Fourthly, the problem of sluggishness most bitterly complained of under pro-
gressivism has not been solved under formalism. As stated by a recent Scottish
visitor:
I asked him (the Soviet headmaster), "But what
happens if a boy persists in laziness?" He an-
swered with a twinkle, "Mr. Kinloch, boys are
_
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boys all the world over, and in Russia, as I am
sure even in Scotland, the persistently lazy boy
can always triumph over the teacher." He was a
very human headmaster. 38
Poor school discipline, juvenile delinquency and lack of political dedication are as
real and as difficult to solve in the Soviet schools today as they were thirty years
ago. Even the most carefully planned school policy has been unable to remove
these now well-recognized stumbling blocks of formalism.
Rigid subject training has thus been once more declared a failure. The
exigencies of practice have now forced a modification of the official attitude. At
present we have witnessed the return of politechnization in the curricula at
secondary as well as at higher levels. There has been an increase of hours spent
on handwork, practical work in training-experimental plots, production practice
in factories and farms, even the study of politechnization as a subject. 39
Examination procedures, methods of recruitment and graduation, work load re-
quirements and ratio of lectures to seminars have undergone a substantial review
and revision. Moreover, the whole spirit of instruction has been vigorously at-
tacked. Recently the USSR Deputy Minister of Higher Education wrote:
At present our higher educational institutions use
the system of instruction and the teaching methods
established back in the 1930's. For some directors
in higher schools this system of precise regulation
of the entire educational process is very convenient:
everything is outlined and:written down in advance;
everything is provided for by the study plans and
-instruction. In other words, there is no need to be
-particularly concerned about the life of a higher
educational institution because it has been standard-
ized by instructions "from above. ,,40
With American controversies in mind it is instructive and somewhat amusing to
co
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see the hesitating steps of the Soviet regime caught, as the proverbial donkey in
the Polish fable, between the oats of high scholarly standards and the hay of
practical socialist construction.
Iv
No educational legislation can succeed unilaterally. It is clear that in the-
oretical perspective the official educational policy has exhibited continuity of purpose.
But in practical application the pull of the people has brought about serious dis-
continuities.- Whereas the government always intended to pursue a steady course,
it found itself embracing or implementing quite divergent policies. The problems
of the structural expansion of education, and of its curriculum have illustrated the
basic design and the numerous deviations from it. They supply comparative docu-
mentation about an educational model in which, contrary to many pronouncements,
the school has not become a one-sided source of indoctrination, but has instead
been reduced to the function of mediator.
Categories other than organization and curriculum would confirm the
contention that the totalitarian school is never as totalitarian as its blueprints.
It is obvious how keenly Soviet authorities want to teach political indoctrination.
Even at an infant level, in spite of advances in Soviet pedagogy, they still do not
hesitate to instill the party line. 41Yet though no one can wholly escape, people
continue through ingenious measures to resist official pressure. They avoid
politically slaiited higher schools. 42.
They seem on the whole unconcerned about
43
the classroom downgrading of Stalin. Last year has even brought signs of
44
questioning-of-the wisdom of official leadership. It is similarly obvious how
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-26-
keenly and how successfully Soviet education has emphasized science. Its role -
although greatly exaggerated in the United States, 45 and although every subject
that is not classed as "art" is counted as "science" in the Soviet Union" - is still
said to be of paramount importance to the expanding national industry. 47 Highly
successful examples of Soviet science teaching are now readily available in Korol's
book and elsewhere. 48 Yet, Russian pride in their achievements in space and
their Western publicity notwithstanding, the most recent official emphasis in edu-
cation seems to be not on science but on training in arts. Liberal arts and culture
are a deep tradition with the Russian people. It is.quite possible that the new edu-
cational interest in the non-scientific subjects in the schools when added to the
reports about the avid interest in literature and art strengthens the evidence of a
counter balance exercised by the pressure of a contemplative people against the
policies of a materialistic government.
But one problem must be watched as potential means of modification of the
present analysis.
49
This problem is related to the general situation in the schools.
It centers on the fate of the development of Soviet teaching as an independent
profession. Such development would imbue the teachers with a sense of
separateness and a sense of responsibility for education, independent of the govern-
ment as well as of the governed. Professional loyalties, transcending patriotic
and human loyalties, could be developed by teachers, and they could come to see
themselves not as servants of the state, nor as an occupation equivalent to other
callings, but as autonomous agents. The school in their hands might thus become
a third factor capable of moulding educational policy instead of a mere prism re-
flecting the official and the popular endeavors. There are signs that might be
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interpreted as forerunners of such transformation. But the appearance of a
professional force might well be the sign of the eclipse of the governmental in-
--
fluence. We would then no longer be able to speak of Soviet education as possessing
_
the continuity with which the communist revolution has invested it.
_
^
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FOOTNOTES TO BEREDAY
1. See G. Z. F. Bereday, "Changes in Soviet Educational Administration",
School and Society (January 18, 1958).
2. G. S. Counts, The Challenge of Soviet Education (New York, 1957), p. 180.
?
3. A. Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1950) p. 323.
4. UNESCO, World Illiteracy at Mid-Century (Paris, 1957), p. 17.
5. Periodi,cheskaya pechat SSSR, 1917-1949. Zhurnali, trudi i biulleteni po
kulturnomy stroitelstvu, narodnomu obrazovaniu i prosveshcheniu (Moscow,
1956), p. 9-11.
6. UNESCO, op. cit., p. 118.
7. D. Samarin in G. Kline (ed.) Soviet Education (New York, 1957), p. 29.
8. UNESCO, op. cit., p. 17.
9. Education in the USSR (Washington, D.C. : U.S. Office of Education, 1957),
pp. 40 and 42.
10. D. Meak,_ Soviet Youth: Some Achievements and Problems (London, 1957),
p 4.
11. Ibid. , p. 9.-
12. Kulturnoe.Stroitel' stvo (Moscow, 1956), p. 76.
13. I. et N. Lazarevitch, L'Ecole Sovietique (Paris, 1954), pp. 48-58.
14. A. Korol, Soviet Education for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.,
1957), p. 3.
15. For instance: "Can we really be reconciled to the fact that several thousand
children of school age were not in school in the republic in 1956?" T.
Turgunpv,-Sovietskaya Kirgizia (July 25, 1957), p. 2, in Current Digest of
Soviet Press (September 11, 1957), p. 29.
16. N. Goncharov, "The Soviet Public Schools", USSR Illustrated Monthly,
no. 13, p.8.
s -28-
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-29- Footnotes to Bereday
17. See G. Z. F. Bereday, "Recent Developments in the Soviet Schools,
Part II", Comparative Education Review, I (October, 195,7),.p. 16-17.
18. L. Dubrovina in The Times Educational Supplement (December 6, 1957), p. 1551.
19. Lev Kassil, Literaturnaya Gazeta, May 25, p. 2, in Current Digest of Soviet
Press (August 14, 1957), p. 12. "On ne venit ni v boga, ni v chorta", is a
source of a new term for the young cynics of the Khrushchev era.
20. V. Dudintsev, Not By Bread Alone (New York, 1957), p. 22.
21. G. Z. F. Bereday, "Recent Developments in the Soviet Schools, Part I",
Comparative Education Review, I (June, 1957), pp. 4-7.
22. New York Times, December 29, 1957.
23. Ibid. , pp. 1 and 2.
24. William Benton, "The Voice of the Kremlin", 1956 Britannica Book of the Year.
25. A. A. Smirnov, "School Success and Related Problems of Psychology",
International Review of Education, III (1957), p. 320.
26. Spravochnik dlya postupayushchich v srednye spetsialnye u-chebnye
zavedenya (Moscow, 1957), pp. 15-20, 23-42.
27. G. Z. F.' Bereday, "Recent Developments in the Soviet Schools, Part II",
Comparative Education Review, I (October, 1957), pp. 14-15.
28. A. Inkeles, "Social Stratification and Mobility in Soviet Russia", in R. Bendix
and S. M. Lipset, Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, 111., 1953), p. 619.
29. W. W. Kulski, The Soviet Regime; Communism in Practice (Syracuse, N. Y.,
1954), p. 267.
30. "Vospitanie i obuchenie anormalnykh detei", Uchitelskaya Gazeta (November
28, 1957), p. 2.
31. 0. S. Kel i N. P. Zubachev, "Opyt organizatsii pervichnogo dletskogo
kollektiva v shkole-internate", Sovetskaya Pedagogika (February, 1957),
pp. 23-31.
32. A. S. Makarenko, Learning to Live (Moscow, 1953); The Road to Life
(3 vols. ; Moscow, 1955); A Book for Parents (Moscow, no date).
33. U.S. Office of Education, op. cit., p. 106.
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34. L. Volpicelli, L'evolution de la Pedagogie Sovetique (Neuchatel, 1954), P. 79.
35. R. Widmayer, "The Communist Party and the Soviet Schools 1917-1937",
Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis (Harvard University, 1952), p. 436.
3 6 . A. Herzer, Bolschewismus und Menschen-bilding (Hamburg, 1951), p. 105.
37. N. S. Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress (Moscow, 1956), p. 102.
38. J. L. Kinloch, "Education in USSR. III", Scottish Educational Journal
(July 1, 1955), p. 435.
39. "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Educational Progress in 1955-56",
International Yearbook of Education (Geneva, 1956), p. 380.
40. M. A. Prokofyev. Vestnik vysshe shkoly (August, 1957), pp. 3-4, in
Current Digest of Soviet Press (October 16, 1957), p. 9.
41. An Indian visitor was recently confronted in a kindergarten by a group of
children aged 3 to 7, who "sung the songs of welcome to us, and songs ex-
pressive of their desire to see Peace established in the whole world. "
K. A. Subramania Iyer, "Education in the Soviet Union", Indian Education
(Spring, 1955), p. 15.
42. S. Banbula, Das neuzeitliche Erziehtingswesen in Sowjetrussland und in den
Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerikas, Ein Vergleich, (Zurich, 1956), p. 82.
43. Children are now taught that Stalin was "excessively rude, showing his
intolerance, his brutality and his abuse of power" and that his actions led to
"the most cruel repression, violating all norms or revolutionary legality. ti
(See K. S. Davies, "The Stalin Generation", The Journal of Education
(July, 1956), p. 293. Compare this with the contents of G. S. Counts and
N. P. Lodge (transl. ) I Want to be Like Stalin (New York, 1947).
44. See "The Ferment Among Soviet Youth", Soviet Survey (February, 1957).
45. See G. Z. F. Bereday, "American and Soviet Scientific Potential", Social
Problems (January, 1957).
46. John McLeish, "The Soviet Society for the Dissemination of Political and
Scientific Knowledge", Fundamental and Adult Education (October, 1955),
p. 157.
47. A. FShalin, "Technical Education in USSR", Yearbook of Education
(1956), p. 110.
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48. For instance on chemistry: S. G. Sciapovalenko, "Sullo studio nella scuola
media dei fondamenti dell'industria chimica moderna", in L. Volpicelli (ed.)
"La Scuola e la Pedagogia Sovietica", Problemi della Pedagogia (July-October,
195-6).
49. The present writer is preparing a study on Class Tensions in Soviet Education.
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CHURCH AND STATE
by
John S. Curtiss
Today the Russian Orthodox Church enjoys the unique distinction of being
the only institution of the old regime that has been able to survive, virtually intact,
after forty years of Soviet rule. It is-the only institution in the U.S. today
that professes aims basically not compatible with those of the Soviet regime. It
seems safe to say that no member of its hierarchy is a Communist. Thus the
Russian church is in the position of Abbe Sieyes, who, when asked what he had done
during the Reign of Terror of 1793-94, answered: "I lived." For the church to be
able to give the same answer indicates that it has great vitality and adaptability.
In 1861, and indeed for nearly six decades thereafter, the Russian Orthodox
Church was the national church of the Russian Empire. At its head was the Tsar,
the "Anointed of God." According to official practice, a Russian was automatically
Orthodox from birth and an Orthodox believer to all intents and purposes was
Russian. The government grudgingly made exceptions in the case of the Old
Believers, who_were an offshoot of the state church, and to some degree in the
case of the "sectarians," who were close to the Protestants in outlook. But on the
whole, in the eyes of the government "Russian" and "Orthodox" were synonymous.
To this official church the Imperial government granted considerable
privileges. ? In-the Council of Ministers the Over Procurator, who had ministerial
status, represented its views. In the provinces, the local bishops could appoint
clerical members to attend the meetings of the zemstvos and the town governments.
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In addition, the officials of the civil government had the duty of protecting. the
1
interests of the Orthodox church and of defending it against attack. Furthermore,
the Code of Laws contained provisions that monasteries and parish churches should
have tracts of land for their support. Not all cloisters and churches, however,
did have land; but for many of those that did not, and for the bishops, the govern-
ment provided salaries and other subsidies. It should be noted that the government
also paid salaries of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and other recognized clergy; but
the Russian church received a far greater amount than the others. 2
Probably more important than the above rights was the monopoly of religious
propaganda that the Russian church enjoyed. While it freely published religious
literature, thanks to its right of censorship it banned theological writings that it
3
regarded as dangerous to its interests. It alone might establish parochial schools
among the Orthodox, and its clergy gave religious instruction to the Russian pupils
in all schools, public and private. 4 And finally, only the Orthodox church might
carry on missionary work and the winning of converts, both amOng Russians and
non-Russians. This right even extended to the children of mixed marriages, who
5
by law must receive an Orthodox upbringing.
Along with government favors to the church went government control.
While in theory the Most Holy Synod governed the ecclesiastical body, in reality it
was subservient to the Over Procurator, a lay appointee of the Tsar. At his
suggestion the Tsar named hierarchs to the Synod or dismissed them, and appointed,
promoted, demoted, or transferred bishops. Moreover, the Over Procurator
dominated the lay officials of dioceses, who, headed by the secretaries of the con-
sistories, were the real power in the episcopal sees. 6 Least of all did the parish
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priests possess independence. Often the bishop of the diocese snubbed and humbled
them, while the diocesan consistory, dominated by the secretary--a little Over
7
Procurator--watched, promoted, or harassed them in various ways.
The chief function of this official church, of course, was the saving of souls.
Certainly there must have been many sincere and devoted pastors who zealously
performed this function. On the whole, however, the Russian church did not excell
in evangelical fervor, but rather stressed liturgical observance. It also did not
8
accomplish much in the field of charity or education.
As a state church, the Orthodox ecclesiastical body had a second function:
that of rendering unto Caesar, which it did in a variety of ways. Through catechisms,
sermons, proclamations, and personal admonition the clergy sought to make their
flocks zealous in obedience to the Tsar and slow to listen to enemies of the regime,
against whom the church publicly hurled its anathemas. The Over Procurators
consistently employed the whole machinery of the church administration for this
purpose, and most of the clergy did as they were told. Especially under
Pobedonostsev:; Over Procurator for twenty-five years under the last two Tsars,
9
the church.organization gave strong support to the Imperial regime.
But while, in part because of its ties with the state, the church appeared
to be strong and influential, actually its condition was not without weaknesses. For
one thing, its influence upon the minds of the Russian people declined during the
nineteenth century. Many prelates ruefully admitted that the intelligentsia was
largely lost to-the church, 10while the growing class of factory workers no longer
clung to Ortho-doxy as had their ancestors. The masses of Russian peasants had
not turned away from the church, but even they were not in full harmony with it.
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N
Many of thEktn observed its rules and attended its ceremonies in mechanical fashion
without real comprehension of Christian doctrine. 11Pobedonostsev himself wrote
that often peasants did not understand the words of prayers which they uttered. In
addition, among the masses of the peasantry a conviction was gradually taking root
that the powerful and the wealthy dominated the hierarchy and used it for their
purposes. To be sure, there were occasional ecclesiastics who expressed liberal
views contrary to the wishes of the Over Procurator and the leading hierarchs.
Nevertheless, by 1900 some of the peasants had become convinced that the Orthodox
church supported the interests of the landowners against those of the peasants. 12
Furthermore, there was dissension in the ranks of the clergy. The parish
priests--the "white clergy"--felt that they were in an inferior position to the
monastics, as they knew that their married state kept them from having a chance
to become bishops. The prelates, drawn from the ranks of the monastics and en-
joying considerable prestige, often looked down on the priests and occasionally
treated theth in haughty.fashion. For these reasons the parish clergy tended to
feel bitter hostility toward the monastics in general and toward the bishops in
13
particular.
Their subservience to the bishops tended to engender in the parish clergy
a feeling of hopelessness and apathy. This seed often fell on fertile soil for the
reason that -Many of the priests, whose fathers had been priests before them, had
had no desire to take the cloth, but had accepted a theological education because
they lacked funds for a secular education. Over and over the bishops and the church
press emphasized that the theological students were often sullen if not rebellious,
prone to socialist ideas and opposed to the teachings of the church. 14Once
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installed in their parishes, some of them sought relief in alcohol, so that a drunken
priest was no rarity in the Russian villages. Others became immersed in the details
of rural life: devoting themselves to farming and quarrelling with peasants about
their lands, the fees for performing services, and other petty matters. 15Certainly
not all of the clergy suffered from these failings, and there must have been many
who were sincere and dedicated pastors. Nevertheless, the priest did not enjoy
much esteem in Russian society, and the strength of the Old Believers and the sec-
tarians indicates that the official church had been found wanting by a considerable
part of the people.
In the Revolution of 1905 the Russian church played a definite role. The
Synod, which had already announced that the conflict with Japan was a holy war,
hastened to brand the unrest that resulted in the massacre of Bloody Sunday as in-
spired by Japanese money and warned the masses against dangerous agitators. 16
Throughout 1905 the Synod gave consistent support to the embattled government,
although it mildly rebuked some of the most reactionary bishops. The official church
periodicals and most of the diocesan journals expressed strongly conservative
views. 17In addition, the ecclesiastic administration printed thousands of leaflets
and brochures for mass distribution, warning against godless socialist ideas and
?
18
upholding the state order. Likewise, most of the bishops took a definitely con-
servative position, upholding the regime against the attacks of the liberative move-
19
ment. Liberal priests suffered various ecclesiastical punishments, while those
who zealously supported the autocracy received generous rewards. Some of the
prelates gave open support to the vehemently anti-Semitic Union of the Russian
People, 20whose banners were stained with the blood of victims of pogroms, while
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Archbishop Antonii Khrapovitsky and Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow and others
21
were in the forefront of the reactionary agitation.
Under such leadership, probably the majority of the Orthodox priests sup-
ported the government. They attacked radicals and liberals, and admonished
peasants and mutinous soldiers to submit to the lawful authorities, in some instances
with much success. Long lists of priests received decorations and other rewards at
22
the hands of a grateful government.
Liberal tendencies also appeared among the clergy in the revolutionary
period. A few of the church periodicals were prog-r-e-s-s-ive-7--a-rdi several diocesan
or informal gatherings of clergy adopted resolutions supporting the liberation move-
ment and criticizing the bishops and the authorities of the church. A few priests
23
even led groups of rebellious peasants, and one died from gunshot wounds.
Others, less extreme in their views, none the less incurred the wrath of the church
authorities and were punished, perhaps to the number of several hundred. Further-
more, in both the First and the Second Dumas there were small groups of priests
among the deputies, who infuriated the Synod and the Over Procurator by strong
utterances in behalf of the masses and against the government. Those who refused
to recant received severe punishment from the authorities. 24
Another sign of ferment in the church was the movement for reform in its
administratio-ri, centered around the proposal to call a church council or Sobor.
This scheme enlisted the support of both conservatives and liberals, with the latter
going much further in the direction of a more democratic system for the church.
In spite of a promising start, however, the movement faded out, resulting in little
more than a lengthy committee report on the subject. 25
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Thus the Russian Orthodox Church came through the first revolution un-
changed. Nothing happened between 1906 and the First World War to alter. its
condition for the better. The leaders of the church continued to give strong support
to the autocracy and fulminated against the mildest of opposition tendencies. Both
the Third and the Fourth Dumas contained over forty ecclesiastics among-their
-
members; unlike the priests in the first two Dumas, those in the later Dumas were
almost entirely conservatives or reactionaries. 26Many high ecclesiastics, as be-
fore, gave utterance to vehement anti-Semitism, which reached its high point in
27
the trial of Mendel Beilis for ritual murder in 1913. In addition to these failings,
by 1911 the corrupting influence of Rasputin had succeeded in penetrating the ruling
circles of the church. 28At lower levels the growing difficulty of filling vacancies
29
in the priesthood boded no good.
During the First World War the church gave zealous support to the nation's
cause by proclamations and other propaganda to army and public and by sending
famous ikons and ardent preachers to inspire the troops. 30After the first flush of
enthusiasm had.passed, however, the church took a less active role in upholding
morale. Sad to say, from 1915 on the influence of Rasputin was again rivetted onto
the church. Prelates in his good graces received preferment, and his henchman,
Metropolitan Pitirim of Petrograd, played an active role in the disgraceful high
politics of the times. 31Many voices spoke out against the sad state of the church:
the priests who sat in the Fourth Duma, several moderate conservatives devoted
to Orthodoxy, and the press of various shades of opinion. But to the end the church
remained fettered to the government. At the very last moment several reactionary
church leaders-called on the people to rally around the banner bearing the device;
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"Far-faith,- Tsa-r, -and--fatherland!"32
When, in spite of the urging-s of the church, the people rose in the February
Revolution to overthrow the Tsar, the Russian church took no action, either to
oppose or recognize the event. In general the clergy were passive. A few priests
tried to incite the people against the new regime; very few spoke out in favor of it.
The Synod-remained as before, until the new Over Procurator ousted its Rasputinite
'33
members and replaced them with more reputable churchmen. A grant of autonomy
to the church soon followed, as the Provisional Government did not want to dominate
it.
After the first shock had worn off, liberal tendencies appeared among the
clergy. In Petrograd several progressive priests took the lead in forming a League
34
of Democratic Clergy and Laymen, with a program of mild socialism. Similar
groups sprang up in some of the provincial cities. In addition, in the spring of
1917 numerous diocesan congresses of clergy met, some of which passed reso-
lutions favoring liberalism and strongly attacking unpopular bishops. In a few
places the clergy ousted hated prelates. 35 This flare of liberalism soon passed,
however, and the clergy reverted to more traditional ways.
As the Provisional Government continued to push the war, the Synod and
the clergy did not waver in their support. The church distributed masses of
propaganda leaflets, issued appeals to the people for reading in the churches, and
ordered the saying of special Te Deums asking for victory. Numerous sermons
urged the laymen to give ardent support for the war, while several popular preachers
made speaking tours along the fighting fronts to inspire the troops. 36Like the
government, the church favored peace only after victory.
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But although the church cooperated with the Provisional Government in re-
spect to the war, it soon quarrelled with the new regime over the nationalizing of
37
the parochial schools and the ending of compulsory religious instruction. By
midsummer the churchmen were increasingly concerned over threats to their
interests, not only from the Provisional Government, but also from the growing
popular radicalism. Frightened by the enormous demonstrations of the July Days,
the Synod spoke out strongly against the Bolsheviks and asked nationwide prayers
against civil strife. It also urged the church to lend strong support for effective
military discipline and advocated the distribution of leaflets opposing socialist
ideas. 38The clergy turned increasingly to participation in politics, giving their
39
support to the Cadet Party as most representative of their interests.
After August 12, 1917, church life centered in the All-Russian Sobor?the
first such council since 1681. It was in part an elected body, but the presence of
all the bishops made the conservative upper clergy the dominant element. The lay
members came chiefly from the nobility, the army, and the bureaucracy. 40 While
the Sobor's original purpose was to deal with purely church problems, from the
first the members felt the need to act to save Russia from the approaching calamity.
To accomplish this, the Sobor issued solemn appeals to the troops and to the
Russian people, warning them in grave terms against radical tempters. 41
When
General Kornilov made his vain attempt to overthrow the Provisional Government
and set up a military dictatorship, the Sobor sent him a message asking God's
blessing for his efforts. Only the fact that Kornilov's coup failed so quickly pre-
vented the Sobor from committing itself strongly in his favor. Nevertheless, in
several other ways it made clear its sympathy with the fiery general. 42
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After Kornilov's failure, the members of the Sobor increasingly felt that
Russia could escape calamity only if the Sobor should elect a Patriarch to lead
the people against their foes. Repeated proclamations and appeals failed to win
the masses away from the Bolsheviks, however, and a projected religious procession
around the Kremlin to confound the enemy did not take place because of the danger-
?
ous times. 43 But in October, 1917, the Sobor held a debate on the revivaL of the
Patriarchate, which ended with the driving out of the more liberal members, who
feared that ecclesiastical absolutism would result. Finally, while revolutionary
fighting was still in progress in Moscow, the Sobor voted to restore his office, and
to the sound of cannon Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow was elected as the first
Russian Patriarch since 1700.44 The leaders of the Sobor had to negotiate with
the victorious Bolsheviks for permission to hold the installation ceremony in the
45
Kremlin--which the victors readily granted. In spite of this, however, the heads
of the church refused to accept the new regime, which they regarded as a passing
episode. When the Soviet leaders began peace talks with the Germans, the Sobor
issued a message to the people not to countenance this betrayal of their Orthodox
46
brethren. Lenin and his fellows did not arrest the Patriarch nor close the
Sobor, but their hostility to religion and the Russian church remained strong.
Soviet-anti-religious feeling stemmed from Karl Marx, who had termed
religion "opium of the people"--an anodyne for their sufferings. Lenin also held
that religion tended to make people submissive under oppression, seeking salvation
in a future life rather than on earth. He specifically attacked the Russian church
as being hand in glove with the oppressors, but he also termed the faith of the
Tolstoyans, with their stress on non-resistance to evil, a "new, purified poison
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for the masses: "47 On the other hand, he warned that religion was a minor
problem and should not become the primary target, lest good proletarians turn
48
against the revolution because of insult to their faith.
Guided by these precepts, the Soviet government was slow to attack the
church, but rather reduced its strength by flanking movements. The nationali-
zation of all lands expressly included those of the church, thus reducing its eco-
nomic position. Another decree took oyer all schools, not excepting the church's
parochial schools; and a third provided that records of births, marriages and
deaths should be kept by the government, not the clergy. Finally, the decree of
February 5, 1918, provided for separation of church from state. This measure,
which completely secularized the state and ruled that religion was a private matter,
provided for the nationalization of the churches and monasteries and their contents,
irrespective of denomination, and deprived the church of all subsidies. Even this
sweeping measure, however, made no effort to close churches en masse, for it
made provision-for turning the nationalized parish churches gratis over to groups
49
of believers who would assume responsibility for them.
Unfortunately, along with these official measures there occurred a number
of unofficial outrages against churchmen and church property. A considerable
number qi priests suffered arrest and even murder at the hands of supporters of
the Soviet regime, and Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was dragged from his mona-
stery quarters and murdered by cutthroats. Soviet sources tell of bands of Red
Guards that invaded churches during service, smoking cigarettes and wearing
caps; some even fired shots at ikons. Occasionally fanatically atheistic soldiers
confiscated church vestments and cut them up to make banners or put them to
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other sacrilegious uses. The Soviet authorities strongly condemned such acts, 50
but to angry churchmen these deeds were no less offensive because they were un-
sanctioned.
The fury of the churchmen soon found vent in active resistance. After
Soviet Officials took over the Synod's printing plant and closed two chapels in
government buildings, the Sobor issued a solemn warning against sacrilege. In
January, 1918, when an official, accompanied by Red Guards, tried to take over a
great monastery in the heart of Petrograd, the monks rang the bells to summon the
51
believers, who drove out the troops; a monk was killed in the melee. A week
later Metropolitan Veniamin organized a religious procession through the streets,
with hundreds of thousands of impassioned believers chanting hymns and attacking
the disrespectful. The Metropolitan delivered a strong sermon urging his followers
to unite around their clergy in defense of the faith, and ordered the reading of a
message from Patriarch Tikhon pronouncing anathema on enemies of the church,
whom he threatened with the fires of hell for their satanic deeds. 52The church-
men apparently believed that the Soviet officials would use force to suppress this
demonstration and probably hoped that the populace would support them against
the godless powers. But the authorities realized the danger and took pains to
distribute leaflets warning against attacks on the marchers. As a result, the oc-
casion passed without violence.
In the meantime, the Sobor in Moscow had approved the Patriarch's
anathema and drafted a message of its own concerning the separation of church
and state. - During the debate the Sobor heard a number of vehement speeches,
of which the most outspoken was that of Dean Vostokov, who, amid much applause,
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charged: "We have cast down the tsar and subjected ourselves to Jews." He
continued: "The only salvation for the Russian people is an Orthodox, Russian,
wise tsar. "54 Later the Sobor issued its message, terming the separation of
church and state an attack on the church and urging the faithful to be ready to
fight against "the dark deeds of the sons of destruction" in defense of their sacred
things. Another proclamation urged the people to unite to defend their churches,
lest they fall into the hands of the ungodly. "Better to shed one's blood and gain
the martyr's crown than to turn the Orthodox faith over to its foes for abuse. "55
The churchmen continued to carry the fight to the enemy. On March 18,
1918, Patriarch Tikhon condemned the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk for having sur-
56
rendered millions of Orthodox believers to the enemy. Numerous religious
processions through the streets challenged the Soviet authorities, including one
to the Red Square in Moscow, where the Patriarch pfficiated and called on the
57
people to go bravely to their Golgotha. Fearing that the government would ar-
rest and execute him, the leaders of the Sobor organized brotherhoods to defend
his person night and day. 58Quantities of leaflets were distributed, condemning
the Bolsheviks as sons of Antichrist and calling on the people to defend their holy
59
faith. These efforts led to occasional outbreaks of violence, in provincial citie.s.
The Sobor had dissolved in August, 1918, but the Patriarch continued his opposition.
In October, 1918, he charged the government with all the evils then afflicting the
people and warned the commissars that they that had taken up the sword would
perish by the sword. 60The government merely put the Patriarch under house
arrest for a time. Another action of the Patriarch was a solemn requiem for the
slain Nicholas II and his family, which the Patriarch and the Sobor performed shortly
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after the execution. 61
Likewise, many of the lesser clergy in various ways corn-
batted the Soyiet regime during 1918. But these efforts failed to arouse a great
upsurge of religious feeling leading to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks. Instead,
-
during-1919 the Soviet regime pursued its policy regarding the church.
On the whole, these Soviet measures were not spectacular. The nationali-
zing of church property, including the confiscation of parish funds and investments,
went steadily forward, and the government met no resistance in taking over the
civil record books. The authorities closed a few parish churches, which for the
_
most part were converted into schools, 6z butreligious observance continued in
most parishes without interference. On the other hand, the Soviet administration
forbade religious education of the young in the churches and permitted it only in
63
private homes. Far from striking sensational blows at the church, the Soviet
leaders warned urgently against outrageous actions against religious faith and in-
sults to believers. Lenin gave a striking example of moderation at Easter, 1919,
by releasing the Patriarch and several other hierarchs from arrest. 64
Not all of the hostile clergy got off so lightly. During the civil war the
Soviet police agencies shot some of the most aggressively hostile of the ecclesi-
astical agitators, whom the government regarded as actually dangerous. The
number of such executions apparently was not large. Other hostile clerics were
arrested or exiled, although the government released most of these prisoners at
the end of the civil war. 65 On the whole, the government seems to have been
rather mild in its treatment of the clergy.
Toward the monasteries and convents, however, the Red leaders were
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unrelenting and demonstrative. The government seized almost all the cloisters
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_
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and ousted the monastic s, putting the vacated buildings to use as hospitals, schools,
or asylums. 66 Moreover, when iventorying the contents of the monasteries the
commissars laid bare sensational frauds in regard to the relics of the saints. The
Soviet authorities made the most of these scandals in order to undermine the pres-
tige of the church. 67
But while the Soviet authorities behaved rather mildly toward the church,
many of the churchmen continued their opposition to the ?Red government by sup-
porting the White armies. Prelates and priests in anti-Soviet territory urged the
people to enroll in the White armies, blessed their banners, and condemned the
Bolsheviks as bloodthirsty monsters accursed of God. The clergy gave warm
approval to such White leaders as Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel and sought to
stimulate the loyalty of the people toward them. The clergy performed Te Deums
asking victory for the White armies and published abundant literature attacking the
Communists and sometimes the Jews allegedly identified with them. Some of the
priests served as chaplains with the anti-Soviet armies, raising their voices to
inspire the White troops to valiant deeds. 68 Finally, on several occasions the
clergy in anti-Soviet areas sent out appeals to Christians of other lands, urging
69
them to support the White armies against the godless Reds.
After the Red army had driven out the Whites and their foreign allies, for
a time an uneasy truce existed between the Soviet government and the Russian
Orthodox church. The famine of 1921, however, soon brought fresh conflict. When
the government asked for contributions for the famine victims, the church grudgingly
donated a small part of its holdings of precious metals. 70Early in 1922 the govern-
ment, not- satisfied with the church's gifts, decided to take a large part of the
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71
abundant church plate for relief. Patriarch Tikhon protested that this was
72
sacrilege and ordered the clergy not to permit it. At almost the same time the
Karlovatskii Sobor, a gathering of emigre prelates and laymen in Yugoslavia,
urged that no aid should go to Russia in order that the famine might cause the Soviet
73
regime to collapse. The Soviet government apparently felt that the Patriarch
and the emigre churchmen were acting in harmony against it. Disorders broke out
in several Russian cities when Soviet officials attempted to seize the church
treasure, resulting in loss of life. The government struck ruthlessly, trying and
executing a number of clergy involved, among them Metropolitan Veniamin of
74
Petrograd. Finally, Patriarch Tikhon himself was arrested and imprisoned for
trial and most observers expected that his execution on charges of counter-
revolution would follow.
At this juncture a handful of liberal priests persuaded the Patriarch to give
76
them limited and temporary power over the administration of the church. With
tacit Soviet support the priests, headed by Dean Vvedensky and Father Krasnitsky,
and aided by two bishops, set up a Temporary Higher Administration of the Church.
Calling themselves the Living Church, they purged the hierarchy of bishops hostile
to the Soviet regime, consecrated some priests as bishops, and declared Patriarch
Tikhon deposed. The new heads of the church sent many prelates into exile and
77
received the support of numbers of the priests and some of the bishops'. Their
sway proved to be brief, however.
The release of the Patriarch struck a deadly blow at the Living Church.
The government had actually issued tickets of admission to his trial, but suddenly
it was announced that he had admitted his guilt and repented of his misdeeds. 78
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Upon his release he took over control of the church and received the enthusiastic
support of most of the believers, who deserted the Living Church in droves. The
latter organization survived for years, but in gravely weakened form. As for the
Patriarch, he had signed a statement admitting-his guilt and renouncing hostility to
79
the Soviet regime, but he failed to persuade his followers to become reconciled
with the government. The two groups of clerg-y, with the approval of the govern-
ment, made several efforts to reunite and reach a modus vivendi with the Soviet
regime, 80but all attempts ended in failure, and the patriarchal church remained
81
hostile to the government. Nevertheless, when Patriarch Tikhon died in 1925
he left a Testament in which he called on his followers to cease their opposition to
the Soviet order and to support it loyally. 82
For several years the church kept its hostility to the government. The
latter sought to compel reconciliation by arresting all the hierarchs who sought to
function as Locum Tenens, so that the church found itself without central leader-
ship.83 Finally, in 1927, after long negotiations and several arrests Metropolitan
Sergii of Nizhnii Novgorod, an elderly and revered prelate, announced that he had
reached agreement with the government and would be permitted to set up a central
administration of the church. 84He not only renounced hostility to the regime, but
called on all believers to do likewise and ordered prayers for the Soviet leaders. 85
Thus the government had obtained the compromise with the church that it had re-
peatedly sought to obtain from Patriarch Tikhon. Essentially this compromise has
endured down to the present.
But while the church now was at peace with the government, it-was faced
by a mounting tide of anti-religious propaganda. During the early years the
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Communist Party had been too busy to carry on any but the most rudimentary
anti-religious work. From 1922 on, however, anti-religious periodicals of the
Communist Party began to appear and an organized movement known as the League
-
86
of Militant Godless started a drive against religion. At first the efforts were
crude and insulting parodies of various faiths, but as time went on the movement
grew and the methods became more skillful, making effective use of science to
stress materialism and combat "superstition. "87 By the end of 1928 there were
88
nearly half a million members of the League of Godless.
During the First Five-Year Plan the attack on the church grew in intensity.
The church lost the right of religious propaganda, and various restrictions and
discriminatory taxation made the lives of the clergy difficult. A few priests were
shot for hoarding silver coins. 89The League of Militant Godless grew very rapidly
and pushed a frenzied drive to get the people to destroy their ikons and to close
churches. Collective farms voted to call themselves godless. 90But in winning
these successes the Godless had often gravely alienated the peasants. Hence in
March, 1930, the Communist Party issued a warning against arbitrary closing of
churches and outraging the feelings of the peasants. 91Following this, the anti-
religious work became less furious, although the League of Godless reached a peak
of nearly six million members in 1932.92
Even before the end of the First Plan the anti-religious drive began to
slacken. Now that the collectivization of agriculture had succeeded, the promotion
93
of atheism seemed less vital and the ranks of the Godless dwindled. Nevertheless,
the church also declined. Many peasants had been persuaded that religion was
oldfashioned, while the schools sought to give the children an atheistic outlook.
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On the whole-, the older people kept their faith, but support for the churches
94
lessened and more and more priests renounced the cloth.
Possibly in part because of the decline of the church, in 1936 the status of
the clergy improved. Stalin himself sponsored a passage in the new constitution
giving them the right to vote and hold office, which gave them equal status with
other citizens, 95 including the right to the unrestricted education of their children.
The income tax laws were changed to put the clergy on the same footing- with
doctors and lawyers. 96Furthermore, Stalin ordered Demian Bednyits Bogatyri
removed from the stage because it burlesqued the introduction of Christianity into
Russia in the tenth century, when--so Stalin declared--Christianity was a pro-
gressive and civilizing influence. During these years Soviet writers portrayed
bishops and priests of ancient times as staunch patriots who had inspired the Russians
97
to defend their land against invaders. It is worthy of note that apparently only a
few ecclesiastics met death during the great purges of 1937 and 1938, although long
lists of Communists of all sorts--political leaders, diplomats, industrialists,
army men--suffered punishment. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the Godless
movement, which had been in the doldrums earlier, recovered between 1937 and
1941 to a total enrollment of almost three and one half million members. 98Never-
? theless, although the Godless periodicals rejoiced that the number of churches
had greatly declined and that the Orthodox Church was having difficulty in finding
priests, gone was the easy optimism of earlier years. The Godless leaders warned
that "religion is very long-lived" and that only by skillful, persistent atheist
propaganda over at least another decade could they hope to eradicate it. 99
When the German armies attacked the U.S.S.R. in June, 1941, both church
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and government strongly supported the agreement made with Metropolitan Sergii
in 1927. At the very outset the Acting Patriarch reminded the faithful of the patri-
otic deeds of their ancestors and blessing all Orthodox "in defense of the sacred
frontiers of our fatherland." Similar appeals were made by other hierarchs. In
addition, Metropolitan Sergii sent encouraging messages to the guerrillas behind
100
the German lines and condemned those who collaborated with the enemy. He
also set an example for his flock by contributing substantial sums for the con-
101
struction of a unit of tanks. His patriotic zeal reached its climax, however, in
his message to Stalin on November 7, 1942. In it he termed Stalin "the divinely
anointed leader" of the nation and asked God's blessing for his "great deeds for the
fatherland. ,,102 The Synod also supported the government by excommunicating four
103
Orthodox hierarchs who collaborated with the Germans in the occupied areas.
The government of the U.S.S.R. cordially reciprocated. Anti-religious
propaganda ceased almost immediately after the outbreak of war. In Moscow in
1942 the authorities lifted the curfew on Easter eve so the faithful might attend
midnight services, and in 1943 they released the miraculous ikon of the Iverian
Virgin for worship by the people. 104Also the government named Metropolitan
Nikolai of Kiev to an official commission investigating German outrages--the first
such appointment since the famine of 1922. 10 5All these acts, however, paled
beside the restoration of the Patriarchate encouraged by Stalin in 1943. He, to-
gether with Molotov, received Metropolitans Sergii and Nikolai in the Kremlin
and gave them official permission for the holding of a Sobor to elect another
106
Patriarch.
On September 7, 1943, a Sobor of nineteen bishops met and elected
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-Metropolitan Sergii as the second Patriarch since 1700 and named a Synod. The
Sobor also voted thanks to the government for its attention to the church's needs,
and urge-d all Christians to unite against Hitlerism. 107The appearance of the
Journal of the Patriarchate of Moscow after a lapse of ten years further marked
the government's benevolence, as did dip visit of the Archbishop of York as a guest
?
of the Patriarch. It is remarkable that this historic event happened under a godless
regime, for under the Orthodox Tsars no Anglican archbishop had ever come to
. 108
Russia.
The government continued to display favor toward the Orthodox Church.
G. G. Karpov, named head of the cabinet's Council for Affairs of the Orthodox
Church, proved zealous in aiding the church to rebuild damaged buildings and to
open seminaries and helped in securing permission for organized religious in-
109
struction to children. Patriarch Sergii succeeded in bringing into his fold the
remnants of the Living Church and the Orthodox clergy of Carpatho-Ukraine, and
reestablished communion with the Orthodox Church of Georgia, doubtless with the
encouragement of the government. 110The government openly showed its bene-
volence by awarding medals For the Defense of Leningrad" and "for the Defense
of Moscow" to substantial groups of ecclesiastics. 111
The churchmen as before rendered service to the government by contri-
butions of over 150, 000, 000 rubles, in addition to hailing triumphs and inspiiing
the people to fight and work for victory. On November 7, 1943, after the recovery
of Kiev, Patriarch Sergii prayed for our "divinely protected land, and for its
?
authorities, headed by its God-given leader. ,,h12 And in 1944 Metropolitan Alexii
of Leningrad,- Sergii's successor, assured Stalin he and his flock all bore deep
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113
love for the Soviet leader. The churchmen also served the state by appealing
to the Orthodox believers of Rumania, Greece, and Bulgaria to throw off the
domination of Hitler. Even Patriarch Sergii's denial of the Pope's claim to be
God's vica-r114 doubtless was pleasing to the Soviet government, which also was
115
critical of the papacy.
After the death of Patriarch Sergii in May, 1944, Metropolitan-Alexii of
_ _
Leningrad, who became Locum Tenens, called a new Sobor in Moscow in January,
1945. This gala event stressed the importance of Russian Orthodoxy, as, in
addition to Russian clergy, two of the Eastern Patriarchs and the Patriarch of
Georgia attended, as well as representatives of two other Eastern Patriarchates
and of the Serbian and Rumanian churches. The Soviet government provided trans-
portation for the visitors, and lavish ceremonies took place after the election of
Metropolitan Alexii as Patriarch. The Sobor voted gratitude to the government and
praise for Stalin. It also issued a message "to the peoples of the whole world,"
denouncing Hitlerite Germany and accusing the papacy of sympathy with fascist
116
doctrines. -
After the Sobor of 1945 the Russian church continued to support the Soviet
government with words of praise, gratitude toward Stalin, and services of thanks-
giving for victory. The Patriarch told a reporter from Izvestiia that the church
had contributed over three hundred million rubles to the government, and above
all, had demonstrated to all the world "its complete unity with the government. "117
It also continued its hostility to the Vatican on political and theological grounds118
and strengthened its ties with the Serbian and especially the Bulgarian Orthodox
churches. 119 also succeeded in regaining control of the Russian monasteries
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120
in Palestine and improved its relations with the Patriarch of Antioch.
But while the church was thus gaining in strength and importance, toward
the end of the war a revival of mild anti-religious activity became evident. It
was called "scientific and enlightening propaganda," with no mention of religion
or the church, but its announced purpose of overcoming survivals of "ignorance,
superstition, and prejudice"121 boded no good for the church.
During the war G. G. Karpov expressly stated that the government's favor
was not a temporary thing, but had resulted from the church's attitude toward the
Soviet state before and during the war. This policy did not end with the war. In
1946 Patriarch Alexii received the Order of the Red Banner for his work during
the war, and in 1947 war medals were bestowed on groups of clergy of several
dioceses. 122In the postwar years the government made possible the rebuilding
or repair of many damaged churches, so that by 1948 Karpov reported that the
functioning churches numbered more than 22,000, 123or about one half of the
number of parish churches in 1917. The number of bishops and archbishops grew,
and the churches were filled on festival days. Moreover, the church and its clergy
appeared to be. in comfortable financial circumstances. A great expansion of theo-
logical education took place, so that by 1955 there were nine seminaries, and two
theological academies for higher education. 124
The Russian church also continued to grow in strength through new ac-
quisitions. In 1946 some five million Uniats of the Western Ukraine renounced
the jurisdiction of the papacy and rejoined the Orthodox Church after some 450
125
years.
A somewhat similar development occurred- in Carpatho-Ukraine, where,
126
after intensive Orthodox missionary work, the Uniats came into the fold. The
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Vatican has charged that these changes were the result of Soviet intimidation;
the Orthodox spokesmen admit that Uniat leaders were arrested after the war, but
claim that the arrests were made because they had actively collaborated with the
Germans. 127It has not proved possible to determine the facts of the case.
That the Soviet government is not adverse to the Russian church's claims
of leadership for the whole Orthodox world was shown by the great church anniver-
sary celebration in 1948. The heads of all the Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe
and the Levant or their representatives were present, so that it resembled an
ecumenical council. 128Indeed, Patriarch Alexii sought to have it function as one
by supporting the position of the Russian church and condemning the papacy and
criticizing the Protestant churches. To his annoyance, however, the Patriarch of
Constantinople objected, so that the Russian Patriarch has not been able to assume
full primacy in the Orthodox world. Relations between the two patriarchs have
129
remained strained.
Since the end of the war the Russian church has extended its influence by
visits to churchmen in Western Europe and in Eastern Mediterranean lands, as
well as by entertaining visiting church dignitaries. More significantly, it has sup-
ported Soviet policy in the cold war. It has consistently charged the United States
and other Western powers with aggressive intent and has taken an active part in
Soviet peace campaigns. 130The Patriarch and his Synod protested to the United
Nations against alleged American aggression in Korea and the bombing of peaceful
civilians. 131It strongly supported Stalin until his death, and has continued its
cooperation with the Soviet government, condemning American atomic armaments
and urging peaceful coexistence. 132
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In spite of this harmony of views, however, anti-religious propaganda
has continued unabated since 1945, although not couched in the strident tones of
earlier years. Above all, strenuous efforts to educate the young along atheistic
lines have become more explicit, with the Komsomol claiming, that a -youth cannot
be an effective and progressive citizen while clinging to outmoded superstitions. 133
There is -some rea-son to think that this- campaign has achieved substantial results.
In retrospect, the Russian Orthodox Church seems to have survived re-
markably well under Soviet rule, in spite of its full identification with the imperial
regime'. Soviet policy toward it seems to have been remarkably skillful. In the
early years it avoided a head-on clash, while reducing the church's strength
through indirect measures. When Patriarch Tikhon failed to persuade his followers
to imitate his changed attitude, the Soviet authorities finally succeeded in securing
a relatively harmonious arrangement with Metropolitan Sergii. Since then the
church has continuously supported Soviet policy, especially during and after the
Second World War. The government has bestowed favors on the church, so that
in some ways its position is excellent. Nevertheless, anti-religious propaganda
has continued, except during the war, and is still strong. This apparently para-
doxical policy becomes clear only if one realizes that the Communist leaders
follow both a long-term and a short-term prograrn. The short-term aims call
for support of the Orthodox Church and use of its influence to further Soviet policy.
The long-iange program, which is consistently followed, calls for the full elimi-
nation of religion in Soviet Russia. Whether the church can survive will be
determined in years to come.
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FOOTNOTES TO CURTISS
1. T. V. Barsov, Sbornik dieistyuiushchikh i Rukovodstvennykh Tserkovnykh i
Tserkovno-grazhdanskikh Postanovlenii po Viedomstvu Pravoslavnago
Ispovedeniia (St. Petersburg, 1885), P. 13; Svod Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii
(St. Petersburg, 1857), II, "Polozhenie o Gubernskikh i Uiezdnykh Zemskikh
Uchrezhdeniiakh", secs. 56-57; ibid. , "Obshchee Uchrezhdenie Gubernskoe",
secs. 298-299.
2. Svod Zakonov, X, Pt. II, "Zakony Mezhevye", secs. 347-356; Sviateishii
Pravitel'stvuiushchii Sinod, Smeta Dokhodov i Raskhodov Viedomstva
Sviateishago Sinoda na 1913 g. (St. Petersburg, 1912), pp. lviii-lix.
3. Svod Zakonov, XIV, "Ustav o Tsenzure i Pechati", sec. 293.
4. Ibid. , XI, Pt. 1, "Svod Ustavov Uchennykh Uchrezhenii i Uchebnykh Zavedenii",
secs. 1476 (supplement), 1699 (supplement), 1823 (supplement), 3124, 3476.
5. Ibid. , XI, Pt. 1, "Ustavy Dukhovnykh Diel Innostrannykh Ispovedanii", sec. 4.
6. Sviateishii Sinod, Otzyvy Eparkhial'nykh Arkhiereev po Voprosu o
Tserkovnoi Reformie (3 vols., St. Petersburg, 1906); I, 219, and III, 385;
Barsov, op. cit., pp. 11-12.
7. Sv. Sinod, Ustav Dukhovnykh Konsistorii (St. Petersburg, 1883), secs. 148
and 153; Sv. Sinod, Otzyvy, III, 53.
8. Sv. Sinod, Otzyvy, loc. cit.; also Supplement, pp. 45-46.
9. P. Smirnov, Nastavlenie v Zakonie Bozhiem (St. Petersburg, 1895), pp. 133-
135; Svod Zakonov, I, Pt. 1, "Svod Osnovnykh Gosudarstvermykh Zakonov",
secs: 4-,_ 55, 56; I. V. Preobrazhenskii, ed. , Tserkovnaia Reforma: Sbornik
Statei Dukhovnoi i Svetskoi Pechati po Voprosu o Reformie (St. Petersburg,
1905), pp. 39-52.
10. Bogosldvskii Viestnik (May, 1906), pp. 35-37.
11. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (April 29, 1906), p. 1018; Sv. Sinod, Otzyvy, III, 451.
12. ProtohiTerarch F. I. lankovskii, "0 Preobrazovanii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi
Tserkvi", Khristianskoe Chtenie (Nov., 1906), p. 628; Sv. Sinod, Otzyvy,
13. Grazhdanin (Sept. 9, 1905) as quoted by V. V. Rozanov, Okolo Tserkovnykh
Sten (St. Petersburg, 1906), 2 vols.; II, 196.
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14. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (Jan. 27, 1907), P. 137.
Footnotes to Curtiss
15. Sviateishii Sinod, Vsepoddanneishii Otchet Ober-Prokurora Sviateishago Sinoda
po Viedomstvu Pravoslavnago Ispovedaniia (St. Petersburg, 1901), p. 48;
Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (Sept. 7, 1902), p. 1234; Vera i Razum (Jan., 1906),
pp. 31-32.
16. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (Jan. 15, 1905), official part, supplement.
17. Loc. cit. (Jan. 29, 1905), official part, p. 42; (March 5, 1905), official part,
PP? 72-13; (Dec. 3, 1905), p. 2110.
18. Sv. Sinod, Vsepoddanneishii Otchet (1905-7), p. 122.
19. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (Jan. 7, 1906), official part, pp. 6-7.
20. Sv. Sinod, 1906, portfolio 775, sheets 1-36.
21. Krasnyi Arkhiv (Moscow, 1928), No. 31, pp. 207-208; Moskovskiia Viedomosti
(October 16, 1906).
22. Sv. Sino-d, Chancellery of the Over Procurator, 1908, portfolio 47, sheets
1-5, 42,--50-52.
23. M. N. Pokrovskii, ed., 1905--Materialy i Dokumenty, (8 vols.; Moscow,
1925-1928), Vol. 5-1, pp. 480-81, 5-6, 48, 139, 271, 48Z, 581, 607, 667.
24. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (May 12, 1907), official part, p. 200; (June 2, 1907),
official part, pp. 220-221.
25. N. V. Ogrfev, Na Porogie Reform Russkoi Tserkvi i Dukhovenstva (St.
Petersburg, 1907), pp. 12-16; N. D. Kuznetsov, Preobrazovanie v Russkoi
Tserkvi (Moscow, 1906), pp. 7-10, 26-63; Preobrazhenskii, Tserkovnaia
ReformaT pp. 1-47, 87-88, 422.
26. Gosudarsstvennaia Duma, UkazateP k Stenograficheskim Otchetam (St.
Petersburg, 1908), III Duma, Session I, pp. 13-18; (1913), IV Duma, Session
I, pp. 19:24.
27. P. E. Shchegolev, ed. Padenie Tsarskogo Rezhima (7 vols.; Moscow-
Leningrad, 1925-27), II, 395.
28. Ibid. , IV, 505; Krasnyi Arkhiv (1928), No. 31, pp. 211-12.
29. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (Sept. 27, 1908), pp. 1917-21.
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Footnotes to Curtiss
30. Loc. cit. (July 26, 1914), official part, pp. 346-48; (Aug. 2, 1914), official
part, p.350; (Aug. 23, 1914), p. 1541; (Sept. 1, 1914), pp. 1545-52; I. V.
Preobrazhenskii, Velichaishaia iz Velikikh Voin za Pravdu Bozhiiu (Petrograd,
1916), pp. 7-71.
31. Gosudarstvennaia Duma, Stenograficheskie Otchety (Petrograd, 191-), IV
Duma, Session V, col. 39; N. D. Zhevakhov, Vospominaniia Tovarishcha
Ober-Prokurora (2 vols.; Munich, 1923), I, 189-90.
32. MoskOvskiia Tserkovnia Viedomosti, No. 3-4 (1917), quoted in B. Kandidov,
Tserkov' Fevraliskaia Revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1934), pp. 16-17.
33. Protopresviter Georgii Shavel'skii, "Tserkov' i Revoliutsiia", Russkaia Mysl'
(April, 1922), pp. 111-112; A. V. Kartashev, "Revoliutsiia i Sobor 1917-
1918 gg. , "Bogoslavskaia Mysl' (Paris, 1942), pp. 78-81.
34. Vserossiiskii Tserkovno-Obshchestvennyi Viestnik (April 15, 1917); Riech'
(March 25, 1917).
35. Shavel'skii, loc. cit., p. 108; Dieianiia Sviashchennago Sobora Pravoslavnoi
Rossiiskoi Tserkvi (15 vols.; Moscow, 1918-1919), Kn. II, Vyp. 2,p. 103.
36. Vser. Ts. -O. Viestnik, No. 28 (1917), quoted in Kandidov, op. cit., pp. 57-62.
37. Kartashev, op. cit., pp. 84-85; A. I. Vvedenskii, Tserkov' i Gosudarstvo
(Moscow, 1923), pp. 64-66.
38. Vvedenskii, pp. 51-53; Tserkovnyia Viedomosti (July 22, 1917), pp. 231-233,
and (Aug. 19, 1917), pp. 263-264; Kandidov, op. cit., pp. 80-84.
39. Kandidov, pp. 43-45, 75.
40. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. I, Vyp. 1, pp. 60-133.
41. Ibid. , Kn. I, Vyp. 2, pp. 25-67; Tserk. Vied. (Sept. 30, 1917), pp. 311-313,
327-330.
42. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. I, Vyp. 2, pp. 48-49, 74; Vvedenskii, op. cit., pp. 98-
99; B. V. Titlinov, Tserkov' vo Vremia Revoliutsii, (Petrograd, 1924), p. 70.
43. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. II, Vyp. 1, pp. 275, 335-36, 402-03; Birzhevyia
Viedomosti (Oct. 20, 1917).
44. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. III, pp. 1-2, 9-16, 38-41, 52-56, 107-109.
45. Ibid. , p. 129.
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46. Ibid. ,-Kn. IV, Vyp. 1, pp. 138-139.
Footnotes to Curtiss
47. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia (3rd. ed., 30 vols.; Leningrad, 1935-37), IV, 353-
54; XIV, 76 and 402.
48. Ibid. ,- XIV, 72, 75.
49. RSFSR, Sobranie Uzakononii i Rasporiazhenii Raboche-Krest'ianskogo
Pravitellstva, No. 18 (1918), pp. 272-273.
50. Titlinov, op. cit., p. 130; Revoliutsiia i Tserkov', No. 2 (1919), pp. 38-39;
P. V.- Gidulianov, ed., Otdelenie Tserkvi ot Gosudarstva (Moscow, 1924),
p. 371.
51. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. I, Vyp. 1, pp. 8-9, 57-59.
52. Ibid. , pp. 59-60; Vvedenskii, op. cit., pp. 114-16.
53. Sobor, Dieianiia, Kn. IV, Vyp. 1, pp. 59-60.
54. Ibid.,-pp. 43-44.
55. Ibid., pp. 71-73.
56. Titlinov, op. cit., pp. 120-121.
57. Sobor,_Dieianiia, as cited in Vvedenskii, Tserkov' i Gosudarstvo, pp. 150,
183-187, 191, 193; Titlinov, op. cit., p. 122.
58. Vvedenskii, op. cit., pp. 202-207; G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Church since
the Revolution (New York, 1928), p. 24; Titlinov, op. cit., pp. 125-126.
59. Titlinov-, p. 127; Fedotov, p. 24; Sobor, Dieaianiia, cited in Vvedenskii,
op. cit. , pp. 194-195.
60. Tserkovnyia Viedomosti Izdaemyia pri Vysshem. Russkom Tserkovnom
Upravlenii Zagranitsei, Sremski Karlovtsy, Yugoslavia, No. 9-10 (1925),
pp. 20-21.
61. S. V; Troitskii, Chto Sdielal Patriarkh Tikhon dlia Tserkvi i Rodiny (Odessa,
1919), p. 13; A. Rozhdestvenskii, His Holiness Tikhon, Patriarch of All the
Russia-s-(London, 1923), p. 22.
62. Revol. i Tserkovt (1919), No. 6-8, pp. 113-114; (1922), No. 9-12, p. 106.
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63. RSFSR, Sobranie Uzak. i Rasp. Pravitel'stva (1918), No. 18, pp. 272-273;
idem, Sistematicheskii Sbornik Vazhneishikh Dekretov, 1917-1920 (Moscow,
1921), pp. 20-21. Gidulianov, and Krasikov, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
64. Izvestiia (Apr. 18, 1919), No. 84; Revol. i Tserkov' (1919), No. 1, pp. 8-9;
Fedotov, op. cit., pp. 42-43.
65. Tserk. Vied . . . . Zagran. (1923), No. 13-14, p. 10; Ezhenedel'nik
Chrezvychainnykh Komissii (Oct. 20, 1918), pp. 20-21; Revol. i Tserkov'
(1919), No. 6-8, pp. 100-101.
66. Revol. i Tserkov' (1920), No. 9-12, pp. 83-84.
67. Loc. cit. (1919), No. 1, p. 42; No. 6-8, pp. 124-125; (1920), No. 9-12, PP?
72-82.
68. Tobol'skiia Eparkhial'nyia Viedomosti (Dec. 28, 1918), No. 34, pp. 321-322;
New York Times, Feb. 15, 1919; L. A. Krol', Za Tri Goda (Vladivostok,
1921), pp. 195-196; A. I. Denikin, Ocherki Russkoi Smuty (5 vols.; Paris,
1921-26), II, 204, 206, 261; IV, 234-235: Kubanskii Tserkovnyi Viestnik (1919),
No. 22-23, pp. 339-343.
69. The Times, Feb. 15, 1919; Sept. 9, 1919.
70. Titlinov, op. cit., p. 184.
71. Izvestiia, Feb. 24 and 26, 1922.
72. A. A. Valentinov, ed., Chernaia Kniga (Shturm Nebes') (Paris, 1925), pp.
253-254:
73. Dieianiia Russkago Vsezgranichnago Tserkovnago Sobora (Sremski Karlovtsy,
Yugoslavia, 1922), pp. 3, 8-14, 24-28, 37-38, 48-52, 151-156; Tserk. Vied.
? ? . . Zagr. (1922), No. 3, pp. 2-4.
74. Izvestiia, Mar. 28, 1922; Apr. 4, 1922; Apr. 28, May 6, 1922; Aug. 13,
1922; Pravda, Sept. 7, 1922, and July 27, 1922.
75. Izvestiia, May 7 and 9, 1922.
76. Tserk. Vied. . . . Zagr. (1922), No. 11-12, pp. 1-2; Vestnik Sviashchennogo
Sinoda Pravoslavnoi Rossiiskoi Tserkvi (1925), No. 2, p. 18.
77. Pravda, May 21, 1922; Izvestiia, May 20, July 11, Aug. 12, 1922; Pravda,
Aug. 17, 1922.
78. Izvestiia; June 27 and 28, 1923.
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Footnotes to Curtiss
80. Troitskii, op. cit., p. 25; I. Stratonov, Russkaia Tserkovnaia Smuta (Berlin,
1932), 98-99; Vestnik Sv. Sinoda (1927), No. 4, pp. 16, 23-24. Izvestiia,
July 5 and 10, 1924.
81. P. N. Miliukov, Outlines of Russian Culture (3 vols.; Philadelphia, 1942), I
186.
82. Izvestiia, Apr. 15, 1925.
83. Stratonov, op. cit., 129-130; Miliukov, op. cit., I, 191; Tserk. Vied. Zagr.
(March, 192-6), No. 5-6, pp. 6-7; (May, T92 p. 6; (June, 1926), p. 32;
(Dec., 1926), p. 9; Fedotov, op. cit., p. 75.
84. Stratonov, op. cit., pp. 175-176.
85. Izvestiia, Aug. 19, 1927.
86. Vsesoiuznaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia, VKP (b) v Rezoliutsiiakh i
Resheniiakh Stezdov Konferentsii i Plenumov TsK (2 vols.; Moscow, 1933-
1936), Pt. 1, pp. 618-620; M. Enisherlov, ed., Voinstvuiushchee Bezbozhie
v SSSR za 15 Let (Moscow, 1932), pp. 285-286, 413-417, 326, 344-345;
Antireligioznik, (July, 1929), p. 112.
87. Izvestiia, Jan. 10, 1923; Antireligioznaia Propaganda. K Postanovke Raboty
(Khar'kov, 1925), p. 7. Enisherlov, op. cit., pp. 305-306, 390-394; I. V.
Stepanov, Kak Vesti Antireligioznuiu Propagandu v Derevne (Leningrad, 1930).
88. Enisherlov, op. cit., pp. 344-345.
89. N. Orleanskii, comp., Zakon o Religioznykh Ob'edineniiakh RSFSR . . . .
(Moscow, 1930), pp. 6-12, 25; Konstitutsii Soiuza SSR i Soiuznykh Respublik
(Moscow, 1932), p. 22; Izvestiia, Feb. 24, 1931, Dec. 21, 1930; Pravda,
Sept. 9, 1930.
90. Enisherlov, op. cit., pp. 296-298, 309-310; Antireligioznik (1931), No. 1, p.
40; (1930), No. 3, pp. 6-7; E. Iaroslavskii, Razvernutym Frontorn (Moscow,
1929), pp. 48-49, 62-64; Pravda, Jan. 15 and 19, 1930.
91. Pravda, Mar. 15, 1930; Vsesoiuzn, Kom. Partiia, VKP (b) v Rezoliutsiiakh,
Pt. II, 662-663, 404.
92. Antireligioznik (1930), No. 8-9, p. 101.
93. Bezbozhnik, July 30, 1931, Oct. 25, 1931, Jan. 24, 1932; Antireligioznik
(1933), No. 22, pp. 27-28; 1932, No. 14, p. 36; Izvestiia, Dec. 24, 1930;
Kom.somolskaia Pravda, Dec. 24, 1930, Apr. 4, and 12, 1931.
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Footnotes to Curtiss
94. Antireligioznik (1930), No. 8-9, p. 101; (1933), No. 3, p. 14; (1932), No. 10,
49-52; Paul B. Anderson, Russia's Religious Future (London, 1935), pp. 19,
41-43; Pod Znamenem Marksizma (1931), No. 3, p. 48.
95. Konstitutsiia Soiuza Sovetskikh Respublik, arts. 135-136, 124; E. E.
Iaroslavskii, Stalinskaia Konstitutsiia i Vopros o Religii (Moscow, 1936), pp.
4-6; I. V. Stalin, 0 Proekte Konstitutsii Soiuza SSR (Moscow, 1949), pp. 32-34.
96. K. N. F'lotnikov, Biudzhet Sotsialisticheskogo Gosudarstva (Moscow, 1948),
p. 280.
0. U.S.S.R., Vsesoiuznyi Komitet po Delam Iskusstv, Protiv Fal'sifikatsii
Narodnogo Proshlogo (Moscow, 1937), pp. 3-13.
98. Bezbozhnik, Apr. 6, 1941.
99. Antireligioznik (1935), No. 4, pp. 11-13; 1935, No. 6, p. 2; Pravda, Feb.
5, 1938; F. N. Oleshchuk, 0 Preodolenii Religioznykh Perezhitkov (Moscow,
1941), pp. 12-17; Bol'shevik (1941), No. 7-8, p. 119; E. E. Iaroslavkii,
Kommunizm i Religiia (Moscow, 1931),. pp. 3-21; Antireligioznik (1934), No.
3, p. 38.
100.. Pravda o Religii v Rossii (Moscow, 1942), pp. 15-17, 83-86, 98-111;
Patriarkh Sergii i Ego Dukhovnogo Nasledstvo (Moscow, 1947), p. 90.
101. Pravda o Religii v Rossii, p. 168.
102. New York Times, Nov. 10, 1942.
103. Pravda o Religii, pp. 129-142; Patriarkh Sergii i Ego Dukhovnogo Nasledstvo,
p. 89.
104. New York Times, Oct. 6, 7, 1941, and Aug. 5, 1943; N. S. Timasheff in W.
Gurian, ed., The Soviet Union, p. 184; Pravda o Religii, p. 216.
105. U. S, S. R. , Soviet War Documents (Washington, D. C.), pp. 155-157.
106. Izvestiia, Sept. 5, 1943.
107. Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii (1943), No. 1, pp. 5-6, 21.
108. Loc. cit. (1943), No. 2, pp. 18-23.
109. Loc. cit.-(1943), No. 3, pp. 22-24; (1944), No. 7, pp. 10-18; New York Times,
Aug. 11 and 12, 1944; Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 30, 1944.
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Footnotes to Curtiss
110. Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii (1943), No. 3, pp. 8-9; (1944), No. 3, PP?
6-10; No. 4, p. 9; (1945), No. 1, pp. 7-8.
111. Soviet War News, Oct. 19, 1943; Russkii Gobs, Oct. 11, 1944.
112. Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1944), No. 10, p. 3; (1943), No. 1, pp. 9-13; (1943), No. 4,
pp. 13-14.
113. Patriarkh Sergii, pp. 135-136.
114. Ibid., p. 90; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1944), No. 9, pp. 3-5.
115. Ibid. , No. 2, pp. 13-18.
116,. Patriarkh Sergii, op. cit., pp. 322-331; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1945), No.
10-11; No. 3, pp. 27-32; Izvestiia, Feb. 4, and 10, 1945.
117. Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1945), No. 5, p. 3; Izvestiia, May 12, 1945.
118. Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1945), No. 4, pp. 7-9 and 19-21; No. 5, pp. 36-43.
119. Izvestiia, Apr. 13, 1945; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1944), No. 10, PP. 6-7; (1945),
No. 5, pp. 19-26.
120. New York Times, May 9, 1944; Izvestiia, Nov. 23, 1944.
121. Propagandist, Moscow, 1944, No. 18, pp. 1-5; Izvestiia, Dec. 14, 1944.
122. New York Times, Aug. 18, 1946; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1947), No. 2, p. 37; (1947),
No. 4, p. 37.
123. USSR Information Bulletin (Jan. 28, 1949), pp. 54-56.
124. Russkii Gobs, Dec. 1, 1946; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1947), No. 6; (1948), Nos. 1,
2, 7.
125. Patriarkh Sergii, op. cit., pp. 372-373; see also J. B. Barron and H. M.
Waddams, ed., Communism and the Churches (New York, 1950), p. 29.
126. Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1949), No. 10, pp. 6-10.
127. New York Times, Mar. 7, 13, 19, and Apr. 15, 1946.
128. Gurian, op. cit., pp. 161-162; Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1948), Spec. Number; (1949),
No. 8, pp. 14-28.
129. Zh. Mosk. Pat. (1948), Spec. No., pp. 35-37, 66.
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130. Ibid. (1948-1957), passim.
131. Ibid. (1950), No. 8, pp. 5-7.
13.2. Ibid. (1953-1957), passim.
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Footnotes to Curtiss
133. Komsomol'skaia Pravda, Oct. 18, 1947 and Mar. 31, 1949; Narodnoe
Obrazovanie (1949), No. 4, pp. 18-21, 25; Uchitellskaia Gazeta, June 10,
1948, and Nov. 26, 1949; Boltshevik (1948), No. 11, p. 36.
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STAT
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44
THE INNER LIFE OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
by
Nicholas S. Timasheff
The inner life of the religious organizations, especially of the Russian
Orthodox Church is, beyond doubt, the segment of Russian culture where change,
from 1861 to our day, has been smaller than anywhere else, and this despite the
tremendous_ change in the state-church relations (which remain outside the scope
of this paper). Of course, today the scope of activities carried out in the frame-
work of the Russian Orthodox Church is much narrower than it was from 1861 to
1917. But no new activities have been added, and those which were present before
the revolution and still are present today, are almost identical in form and content.
A separate description of these activities before and after the revolution
would be tediously repetitious. This paper therefore concentrates on the inner
life of the Russian Orthodox Church as it is today, with eventual statements about
the partial difference between now and then. There is an additional reason for
choosing this plan. Before the revolution, among investigators of Russian church
life, both foreign and Russian (except spokesmen of the church and the government),
the opinion was strongly represented that the Russian Orthodox Church was almost
a dead body, attached to the Imperial government as one of its branches. This
opinion never could be proven, but neither was it easy to refute it. Were the
opinion- correct, any inner life of the church would have stopped shortly after the
October revolution; such was definitely the expectation of the new rulers of Russia.
But undeniable facts which could be observed and recorded during the past forty
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years demonstrate that the church is alive. Anticipating more detailed statements,
let me quote the conclusion to the report of the Quakers who visited Russia in 1955:
We see the Russian Orthodox Church as a living force
capable of great good and offering some promise of in-
fluencing the future development of Soviet society. In
any event, we found it in anything but the moribund
_ state in which most Westerners assume it to be. 1
The conclusion is obvious: if the Russian church is alive today, it was
alive before the revolution, and the controversial past can be best reconstructed on
the basis of-the data concerning themselves with the present.
The survey of the inner life of the Russian Orthodox Church today with oc-
casional excursions into the past must however be preceded by a few statements
about the structure in the framework of which the activities under study were and
are being carried out. Since time immemorial, the Russian Orthodox Church has
been the established church of Russia to which the vast majority (about 70%) of the
population officially belonged; the actual figure was somewhat smaller, because of
defections among the intellectuals and the industrial workers. After Peter the
Great, the church was headed by a Holy Synod, an assembly of bishops designated
by the government. In 1914, the church was divided into 64 dioceses, with 130
bishops and about 50,000 priests. The church encompassed more than 900 monas-
teries and convents, with 80,000 monks and nuns. It maintained four Theological
Academies and 58 seminaries for the training of priests. Moreover, it controlled
a network of parochial schools granting primary education to three million
children. - It also fostered an impressive number of publications, periodical and
non-periodical. Z
T_he dark spot in the picture was the withdrawal of the intellectuals, "
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accentuated since the 1860's. But early in the twentieth century, the tide turned;
there began a back-to-church movement led by such men as P. Struve, N.
Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, and S. Frank. In the early 1900's, brilliant debates on
religious topics could be heard in the Religious Philosophical Society, with the
participation both of clergymen and laymen. Within the church itself, there arose
a group of liberal priests who longed for a renovation (not reformation) of the
church. 3
The Provisional Government granted the church the right of self-
determination. The National Convention (Sobor) of 1917-18 repealed the Petrinian
reform and went back to the monocratic organization which the majority of the
Eastern Churches had had throughout their history. The Sobor decreed two re-
forms deviating both from the Petrinian and the Muscovite style. It placed, be-
tween the central church government and the dioceses, twenty odd metropolitan
districts and granted the parishes a democratic organization. But the October
Revolution put the very existence and survival in question, since it forbade re-
ligious education to be given to persons below the age of eighteen, nationalized
church property and deprived the latter of legal status. Only "groups of twenty
believers" were recognized and entitled to run individual church buildings. On
the unofficial level, the structure survived, but was badly shaken. The metro-
politan districts were de facto abolished when regular communication between the
levels became impossible because of persecution, and were not restored when
persecution gave way to compromise. The democratization. of the parishes was
curbed at the Sobor of 1945; this probably was part of the price the church paid
-
for receiving official status.
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So, today, the structure consists of the three cannonically essential levels:
the National Church headed by the Patriarch and a Synod of bishops; the dioceses
whose heads _bear the title of?metropolitans, archbishops and bishops, but are equal
as to rights and duties; and the parishes which are said to number twenty to twenty-
five thousand.
During the first few years after the revolution of the church, despite all
limitations and deprivations, fostered charitable and cultural activities, through
fraternities and sororities. Such institutions were known in pre-revolutionary
days, but suddenly became more numerous and vigorous. These activities were
curbed during the first wave of persecution, 1922-24, but revived during the truce
of 1925-29. Cultural activities (short of formal religious instruction) received a
tremendous impetus. During these years, the Soviet press mentioned the existence
of a youth organization called Khristomol, in opposition to the Komsomol; in some
dioceses, the-former was more numerous than the latter. In 1929, all these
activities were abruptly terminated by a decree explicitly prohibiting them. Since
then, they have not revived, at least on a large scale. 4 -
Now let us turn to the activities performed by the Russian Orthodox
Church in our day. The central church government takes care of all questions of
_ _ ?
faith and church order. Not much is known about this activity but all symptoms
point in one direction, ultra-conservatism and anti-modernism. The sermons
published during the past fourteen years in the Journal of the Mosoow Patriarchate
-
and the rare publications treat problems of theology, Christian ethics, rites and
so on exactly as was the case some fifty years ago. The Patriarchate insists on
keeping the old, Julian calendar, despite the fact that already in 1918 the Soviet
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government shifted to the new, Gregorian style, and the fact that an all-
Orthodox Congerence held in Moscow in 1948 advised the individual churches to
use the calendar adopted by the respective governments, though continuing to cal-
culate the date of Easter according to rules established in the fourth century by
the Church of Alexandria. On many occasions the Patriarch has enjoined the
bishops and priests strictly to follow the ancient rules concerning divine service
and admonished the flock to comply with the church rules concerning fasting. In
1_955, the Patriarch directed the clergy-and the flock to avoid exaggerated deco-
ration of the churches; emphasis should be laid on cleanliness and conformity with
the traditional style; there should be not too much electrical light; living flowers
should never be brought into the altar; the choirs should preferably choose ancient
and austere motifs. 5
Another major function of the central church government is that of
supplying the total structure with trained priests. After fifteen years of inter-
ruption, the training of priests has been resumed in eight seminaries and two
academies, file latter being conducted on a substantially higher level than the
former. -According to information available, the inner order of these institutions
is almost of the monastic type, and the curriculum is similar to the pre-.
revolutionary one. Of course, the students have to study the Soviet Constitution;
lately, the teaching of philosophy has been substantially curbed. On the other
hand, the students of the academies are sometimes granted the opportunity to
attend good plays in the theaters and are injoined to participate in excursions to
museunis, under the guidance of instructors; this is a conspicuous innovation.
The teaching staff consists partly of persons trained before the closing down of
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theological "Schools (in 1927) and of graduates of schools located outside Russia
(Warsaw, Paris, Sofia, Harbin); recently, a few graduates of the two academies
functioning on Soviet soil have been appointed to teaching positions. The number
of applicants for enrollment (who must carry recommendations of their parish
priests) is larger than the number of vacancies. But the number of graduates is
lower than needed to replace those who die or quit. Therefore, the Leningrad
Academy has organized correspondence courses, and in some dioceses short
courses are organized to prepare for priesthood persons already familiar with
6
divine service and the Holy Writ; these again are innovations. Unfortunately, no
figures are available. Information collected by recent visitors to Russia makes it
seem probable that no more than five hundred graduate a year from the regular
schools, though one thousand are needed to maintain the clerical staff on the present
level. 7
Little is known about the functions of the dioceses. Of course, super-
vision of the activities on the parish level is their main responsibility. Sinee the
official recognition of the church, this activity has been resumed; initially, it
was carried out mainly by correspondence, by invitation of individual priests to
the diocesan see, and through the intermediary of archpriests, i. e. , older priests
designated by the bishops to guide their younger colleagues and to check their
activity. Since 1955, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate has started
publishing reports about visitation of parishes by the bishops, which was quite
common prior to the Revolution. These reports show the bishops going some-
times to remote villages and finding there large crowds gathering from vast areas.
The main function of the church as a whole is to provide the believers with
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divine service, -especially the sacraments and certain essential rites. This ac-
tivity, dommon to all religious denominations, has always been emphasized by
the Eastern Churches. The function is, naturally, carried out on the parish level..
Since the reconstruction of the church during the war and its aftermath, divine
service is regularly going on in thousands of churches. On weekdays, attendance
is naturally small. But, as testified both by the Journal and by foreign visitors,
on big holidays and on special occasions, such as the visit of a bishop, churches
are often jammed.
When, in June 1955, the Quaker delegation attended at a Mass in one of
the largest churches in Moscow, Metropolitan Nicholas of Krutitsy was officiating.
The service was long and ceremonial. The congregation number about 5,000
persons. 8
Mrs. Henrietta Bower, a Protestant who came to Moscow to study Soviet
children's films and who, incidentally, was shown the way to a Russian church by
a senior army officer, says: "On Sundays, the churches are tightly jammed. I
had the greatest difficulty in edging and elbowing my way, inside the cathedral, to
a point where I could catch a glimpse at three priests chanting the Mass. The
churches I visited on weekdays were comfortably full. "9
Harry-Schwartz who visited Russia in the Fall of 1955 tells his impression
as follows:
A Sunday visit to a typical church finds it well filled
- with a congregation made up more than half of old
women.... A better idea of the hold of religion is
given when one attends a church of a special holiday.
- On such occasions, people come in large Masses.
There are many children, soldiers, men and women
in the prime of life. One can see parents leading
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their toddlers to sacred relics to kiss them. An at-
mosphere of profound devotion and joy in worship
predominates. 10
The crowds seen in the churches are, so-to-say, samples from a universe
formed of the totality of the believers belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Unfortunately, the size of the universe is unknown, not only to students of Russian
church affairs, but, probably, also to the heads of the church and the government.
Only estimates are possible. In conversations with a delegation of American
churchmen to Russia in March, 1956, Metropolitan Nicholas of Krutitsy, the
second ranking person in the Russian Orthodox Church, agreed with a suggested
estimate of fifty million.11 One year earlier, the present writer reached con-
clusions pointing to a similar figure by comparing the number of bishops and
parishes today and in 1913 and assuming that the ratio of bishops and parishes
to the number of believers was the same. 12
Who are the believers? Of greatest importance is their age distribution.
There is.no doubt that the bulk is formed by middle-aged and older persons.
But, according to numerous testimonies of eyewitnesses and statements
of the Soviet press, children and younger persons may also be seen at the
churches. During the acute anti-religious campaign of 1954, one could read in
the Pravda that in many villages children continue to parade through the streets
at Christmas time singing carols and reciting prayers, and that even in Moscow
many children attend church. In a more general form, the Komsomolskaya
Pravda wrote: "Many boys and girls believe in miracles; they attend services
organized by various denominations; they often consider it necessary to consolidate
their marital happiness by church weddings and to have their children baptized. "13
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An extremely important fact has been recently reported by Mr. John
Lawrence, a Baptist who has visited the Soviet Union many times. Of course, he
says, "a-great part of the congregations are old or middle-aged, but they are not
older now than they were thirteen years ago when I began to observe such things."
He explains this fact by a kind of religious cycle: most of the children are taught
to say their prayers in the family, but when they go to school they come under
atheist influence and most of them break with the church before they are eighteen.
But later on many find the way back into the church. 14
As to the class membership of the believers, the bulk are peasants who
still form half of the total population. But there are believers also among in-
dustrial workers and intellectuals. The persistence of religion among industrial
workers is confirmed by information published in the Journal about the visitation,
by bishops, to such industrial centers as Shakhty and Magnitogorsk, the latter an
entirely new one, so that the church visited must have been built rather recently.
New churches are reported to have been built in such industrial centers as Ivanovo
and Anzhero-Sudzhensk (in Siberia), and existing ones to have been repaired in
such large cities as Rostov, Saratov, and Kishinev.
Concerning the participation of the intellectuals, the following statements
of the Soviet press are revealing: "Among people participating in the celebration
of religious-holidays one often finds doctors, engineers, labor union activists.
The majority come simply because they have been invited by friends; but they
consider it-proper to accept invitations to serve as godfathers or to attend at
church Wedding or funeral. "15 Around "the holy spring at Glinkovo" (of which
more will be said later), a Soviet newspaperman could identify an assistant
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principal of a technicum, an engineer, a senior research assistant at the Moscow
University and his wife, a student of the Institute of Foreign languages, as well
as the head of an office that forms a part of the ministry of capital construction. 16
The attraction of the church does not stop even at the gates of the party
and the Komsomol, despite the obligation imposed on the members to adhere to
the atheist philosophy of Marxism. Members of the two organizations Often par-
ticipate in the mammoth celebrations of local church holidays (of which more will
be said later). During the anti-religious campaign, Pravda acknowledged that
even local party officers let their babies be baptized, commonly at night to avoid
public attention. 17
What is the value which exerts the strongest attraction toward the Russian
Orthodox Church? There is no doubt: it is the divine service itself which people
have learned to love in the course of a millenial tradition. They like the icons,
the ceremonial movements, the sacramental invocations and, above all, the
beautiful church songs. Beauty and also order found in the churches, in contrast
to the ugliness and disorderliness of local "cultural institutions" of the Soviets is
often staiking.
Where the church beats the atheist state with certainty, is the wedding
ceremony. Recently, this telling story was published: Two young people, con-
trary to the-advice of their parents, decided to get married only in the office for
the registration of births, deaths, marriages and divorces. They entered the
office; it was dark and damp, and there was a pronounced smell of mice. The
officer, a girl, did not conceal that she hated to work under these conditions.
As if to corroborate her complaint, a mouse climbed over a filing cabinet; the
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girl hurled a paper weight at it from the desk. The young couple had to wait for
two hours. Finally, their turn seemed to have come. But no, a new visitor ap-
peared and the officer shouted: "Wait a moment, I must first register a death."
The marriage was finally registered, but the young people were so disgusted that
next day they went to the church and had a beautiful church wedding. They were
accompanied by several young boys. Probably, the experience will be never for-
gotten b'y them. 18
There is one more interesting and important symptom of the survival of
religion among the masses of peasants. The practice is not actually religious and
is frowned upon by better clergymen; but it flows from the religious sentiment as
shaped by a millenial tradition. This is the extravagant celebration of the days of
the patron saint of a church, a phenomenon which was quite common before the
revolution and which, by the way, is described along similar lines with respect to
Southern Italy and Spain. Reports published during the anti-religious campaign
of 1954 show that the customs in question have not been uprooted by the years of
Communist dominance. Here are a few instances:
In Sergievo, a village 20 miles from Vologda, a reporter sent by the
Kom-somolskaya Pravda could not find anyone working in the fields of the collective
farm,. not even the chairman or the secretary of the Komsomol organization. He
asked an old man where could they be. The latter looked quite astonished: "But
do you not know? This is the day when everybody worships the Tikhvinskaya icon
of the Blessed Virgin to which our church is dedicated." Finally, the reporter
found a militiaman who looked quite tired. "Believe me or not, " he said, "this
has been-my fifth sleepless night; so large have been the crowds." and he
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continued: "A few days ago, in the Soviet farm Dikoye, the people have celebrated
the St. John the Baptist day; a few days later, they will gather in the village of
Dulepovo, to celebrate the Sts. Peter and Paul day." Finally, the secretary of
the Komsomol organization showed up, and with her a number of rank-and-file
members. The reporter asked - maybe, they have come to explain to the people
how disgusting their conduct was and to persuade them to go home and resume
working? No, emphatically said the girl. "It would be useless; nobody would go
to work on such a day; such is the old tradition, and nobody can break it. "19
In 1955, this story appeared. A reporter visited the kolkhoz Roscha, in
the Vologda oblast, but could see nobody in the fields. Women were busy preparing
food for a festival and men brought up from the cellars barrels with alcoholic
beverages. Why? That was the eve of Ascension, and Ascension is the local
church's holiday. The visitor was told that for several days nobody would be
working for the farm, since permission to stay home had been granted to every-
body. The reason was very simple. The chairman of the kolkhoz and the local
party organizers were walking from home to home enjoying everywhere food and
_
drinks. The visitor continued his investigation and learned that similar mores
prevailed throughout the whole region. He was told that at the St. Nicholas day
the village had beenhonored by the visit of the chairman of the local executive
committee accompanied by several aides. They spent there 'four days cele-
brating with the peasants and seemed to have been very pleased. 20
One must insist: the celebrations cannot be considered as taking place
in the framework of the church; but they are functionally linked with church ac -
tivities since the festival always begins by a solemn Mass, often celebrated by
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several priests and attended by large crowds.
Let us now return to the liturgic activities of the church and contemplate
some of its phases. For the believer, the climax is reached when he partakes in
Holy Communion. According to a .r.:eCntstatement, it is typical for an average
church to have ten or more communicants on regular Sunday Masses, while at
Lenten there,are several hundreds. 21 In the cathedrals, during Lenten, many
priests have to officiate simultaneously; nevertheless, it takes hours before the
last man is satisfied; the flock is very patient. 22
Since, in the Russian church, Communion must be immediately preceded
by confession, difficulties arise. The traditional manner of confession is private
but, reluctantly, the clergy had to recur to group confession; then, the priest says
aloud the ritual prayers and exhorts those present to confess, to the Lord, their
sins. This is done silently. In 1955, this practice was condemned by the Patri-
arch. But since not enough priests were available to execute the order and return
to private confession, a compromise has arisen. The priest reads the prayers
and enumerates the common sins; the worshippers confess silently; but absolution
is given to each separately, and everyone is enjoined to tell the priest one's sins
not comprised in the list. 23
Many recent visitors from the outside report that baptism of children is
widespread, church wedding fashionable and religious funeral quite common. 24
Babies are often baptised in groups, a practice formerly unknown. Attending at
such ceremonies must be a startling experience, as it appears in the following
testimony by-Mrs. Bower, mentioned above:
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We stood in a large chapel, with a great font in the
center. Bending over it stood a priest; around him,
in a great circle, were about seventy young couples,
some of them with lighted candles, chanting hymns.
On each side of the wall, there were tables where
babies were being stripped for baptism by immersion. ? . ?
It was quite impossible not to be overwhelmed by the
atmosphere of devotion and faith which filled the chapel. 25
'A similar scene was observed by the American delegation of churchmen
to Russia, in March, 1956, in Udelnaya, a suburb of Leningrad. Twelve children
were baptized in their presence, but the visitors were told that sixty more had
been baptized before their arrival. One of the members of the delegation, Mr.
Parlan, states: "The sponsors stood quietly by taking their vows in the ceremony
"26
as solemn as the coronation of a King.
In addition to the regular divine service, the Russian Orthodox Church
offers the believers the opportunity to satisfy their religious needs on a higher
level, by pilgrimages to monasteries and shrines with relics of saints, commonly
located in monasteries. During the period of persecution, monasteries and con-
vents Were disbanded, although some found a way to survive underground. With
the reconstruction of the church, some of the monasteries reappeared. Immediately
after the end of the war, ninety such institutions were said to exist; sixty-nine were
reported to exist in 1956.27 Of the monasteries, two, the Troitsky-Sergievsky
monastery in the region of Moscow and the Kievo-Pechersky monastery in Kiev
exert the greatest attraction.
Harrison Salisbury, for several years the representative of the New York
Times in Moscow, gives an interesting account of his Easter visit to the Troitsky-
Sergievsky Monastery. "Thousands of believers and spectators jammed the great
monastery enclosure and the three cathedrals. Hundreds of believers formed
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lines waiting for priests to bless their Easter cakes. The great onion shaped
towers of the churches, freshly painted and spattered with golden stars, gleamed
against a brilliant April sun. " In a book where he reproduces his observations
made during the sojourn in Russia, he adds that each year of the six he paid
visits to the monastery, there came more pilgrims, and that finally twenty-five to
thirty thousand people gathered inside the monastery walls. 28 As seen from yearly
accounts in the Journal, approximately the same number of pilgrims attend on
July 18, St. Sergius's day. Quite recently, a note appeared in the Journal re-
porting that two new chapels had been added because of the overwhelming number
of pilgrims and that special prayers before the relics of St. Sergius were said all
the day without interruption. 29
In 1955, the Kievo-Pechersky monastery was visited by Father Bissonnette
of the Catholic Church. Here are excerpts from his account:
When we reached the caves we saw a group of pilgrims
straight out of Dostoyevsky. A hundred or more were
sitting against a wall. They had pitiful bundles of
clothes at their feet. We found that some had come
from even farther than we (Moscow).... We moved to
the entrance of the monastery following a line of persons
_going into the caves with a young monk as a lead. He
indicated the final resting places of the founders of the
_-monastery, Sts. Theodose and Anthony.... The
persons in the group kissed the glass above their heads
many times and crossed themselves continuously
_
?
muttering prayers.... There could be no doubt about
the sincerity of their religion. 30
Pilgrims however go not only to monasteries and shrines. Sometimes
they choose as goals places to which the church does not ascribe any significance;
^
and still they are moved by intensive religious feeling. Two recent cases are of
great interest.
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The article in the Komsomolskaya Pravda which signalized the beginning
of the anti-religious campaign, stated that, in the rural parts of the province of
Gorki, people, young and old, continue to believe in a legend connected with lake
Svetoyar located in one of the regions of the province. According to the legend,
the lake was formed, by God's will, during the Tartar invasion, on the location
of the God-loving city of Kitezh which sank to its bottom, all church bells ringing,
to escape desecration and reappear when Holy Russia would be alive again. Now,
it was stated, the people around assert that believers, after long and intensive
prayers, could see the city with its churches in the waters of the lake. Half a
year later, another Soviet paper returned to the legend and its acceptance by the
population. On the eve of the holiday of the Vladimir skaya icon of the Blessed
Virgin, pilgrims arrived from Gorki, Arzamas, Kostroma, Kirovsk and so on.
.Among them, many were youths. When asked why they had come, some answered
that they had made a vow to make the pilgrimage if they passed their examinations. 31
A newspaperman heard, from a Soviet functionary of relatively high rank
(he happened to possess an automobile) that, in Glinkovo, near Moscow, there was
a spring of water of which had the miraculous power to cure many diseases. On a
Sunday, the reporter went to see. On a hill, he saw a long line of women with
bottles, ready to collect some water; many of them were chanting hymns. In a
pond toward which "the holy water" flowed, quite a few older men and women were
bathing. The reporter stood long enough to observe many cars coming, with
doctors, students, and engineers as passengers. They asserted that the Glinkovo
water really helped while doctors often did not. 32
But, of course, the bulk of religious exercises is carried out in the
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framework of the church. As a counterpart, the believers fully support the church
which, naturally, is no longer supported by the government, while the big endow-
ments which played a large part in the church budget before the revolution were
nationalized in 1918. Now, the believers have to give enough to provide the
personnel, i. e., the priests, the bishops, the members of the diocesan admini-
stration, -67nd the central church government, with means of subsistance, and to
maintain the church buildings and the monasteries. They do this by voluntary
donations and by buying, in large amounts, tapers priced (as has always been the
case) many timesabove the cost. A priests' average income is said to be 50%
higher than that of a skilled worker. 33
But the believers do more than support the personnel and the existing es-
tablishment. - Almost every issue of the Journal mentions cases of consecration
of newly built, reconstructed, enlarged, or redecorated churches. It is interesting
that this activity did not slow down even during the year 1954, when an acute anti-
religious campaign was going on. During that year, the cathedral in Vladimir
has been renovated as well as those in Irkutak and Zhitomir. Substantial repairs
were carried out in churches in the dioceses of Chernoutsy, Novosibirsk,
Leningrad, Pskov, Volyn, and Ria.zan. In 1955, among other items, a convent
was rebuilt in the diocese ,Chernigov, and the church in Pushkin's estate
(Mikhailovskoye) was renovated. In 1956, again among other things, in the dio-
cese Molotov (now probably Perm) a church building was moved from an area to
be flooded as the consequence of the construction of a dam. In the diocese Tula,
a church was-built, in place of an older one, on the Kulikovo Pole, the battlefield
between Russians and Tartars in 1380. In the early issues of the Journal for 1957,
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general repairs of churches are reported from the dioceses Kaluga, Staraya
Russa and Odessa. It is sometimes emphasized that all these works have been
performed by the parishioners, sometimes aided by collections in neighboring
parishes and-dioceses. It must be noted that large-scale work aiming at the
restoration of-church buildings of exceptional architectural value is carried out
by the Soviet government. As a rule, such buildings are treated as historical
monuments and are not open for worship. As an exception, the majestic cathedrals
in the Troitsky-Serguievski Cloister have been beautifully restored by the govern-
ment and, nevertheless, are open to the public, as has been mentioned above.
Concluding this survey, one may assert that there is genuine life in the
Russian Orthodox Church, continuous interaction engendered by the religious as-
pirations of millions of believers who, obviously, find in the church what they
want and what they are accustomed to. The scope of this inner life is extremely
limited, being confined to the celebration of divine service, the maintenance of
monasteries,-and the training of priests. There is neither organized religious
education of the young generation nor any kind of social work, while, prior to the
revolution, such activities were well-developed. During the 1956 exchange of
views between the Russian and American churchmen, the question of "the mission
of the churches" was vividly discussed. The Russian delegates stubbornly em-
phasized worship, pastoral visitation, confession and communion as the very
mission of the church. One of the delegates said: "The only true interpretation
of religious life is the church itself. Sermons, confession, special services in
the homes are sufficient. No amount of literature can give what example offers. "34
Before the revolution, the view of the mission of the church was broader.
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Being limited in scope, the inner life of the church is intensive, as seen
from the data on church attendance, baptism, confession, communion, and
pilgrimage. On the part of the believers, participation means sacrifice, on the
one hand material, on the other hand social, -since churchgoers expose themselves
to the discrimination inherent in the political structure of the Soviet Union. While
the Soviet government officially is religiously neutral, the Communist Party is
not and, as well-known within and outside, all better positions are reserved to
members of the Party.
The thesis asserted in the very beginning of this paper seems to be well
substantiated by evidence: In the church, and around the church, a part of old
Russia has survived, in the context of an all-out social and cultural change. The
believers form a much smaller percentage of the total population than was the
case before the revolution; but those who are believers want to actualize their
faith in the framework of a structure and in forms which faithfully reproduce the
past. The tenacity of the tradition has been once again proven during the difficult
year 1954 and has compelled the, then, collective leadership to abandon an at-
tempt to accelerate the decline of religion in the society under their rule.
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FOOTNOTES TO TIMASHEFF
1. Meeting the Russians (Philadelphia, 1956), p. 79.
2. The data on the Russian Orthodox Church before the Revolution have been
compiled from the Otchety Ober-Prokurora Sviateishego Synoda, for the
years 1909 and 1910, the last published.
3. On the see V. Weidle, Russia Absent and Present (New York,
1952), pp. 80-90.
4. N. S. Timasheff, Religion in Soviet Russia (New York, 1942), pp. 59 and 62.
5. Zhurnal Moskovskogo Patriarkhata (hereafter cited as Zhurnal), 1955, No. 2.
6. Zhurnal, 1949, No. 10; 1950, No. 3; 1951, No. 11; 1955, Nos. 2 and 3;
1956, No. 11.
7. Henrietta Bower, "God's Underground in Russia", Christian Herald
(November 1954), pp. 20 ff.
8. Meeting the Russians, p. 71.
9. Bower, loc. cit.
10. Harry Schwartz, New York Times, November 9, 1955.
11. Paul Anderson, Christian Century, April 19, 1956.
12. N. S. Timasheff, "Urbanization, Operation Anti-Religion and the Decline of
Religion in the USSR", American Slavic and East European Review (April,
1955), pp. 234-5.
13. Pravda, _August 4, 1954; Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 6, 1954.
14. John Lawrence, "Here are Facts about Russian Protestants", Eternity,
(November, 1955), pp. 8 ff.
15. Trud, June 28, 1954.
16. Trud, July 25, 1954.
17. Pravda, August 4, 1954.
18. Turkmenistanskaya Iskra, April 2, 1954.
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19. Komsom-olskaya Pravda, July 29, 1954.
Footnotes to Timasheff
20. Krokodil, July, 1955. This satirical periodical often conveys important
information otherwise unavailable.
21. Zhurnal, 1957, No. 2.
22. C. Shevich, in Vestnik zapadno-evropeiskogo ekzarkhata (Paris), May, 1947.
23. Zhurnal, 1956, No. 4.
24. Frank Rounds, Window on Red Square (Boston, 1953), p. 81; E. Stevens,
This is Russia, Uncensored (New York, 1950), p. 114; J. Lawrence in
The Listener, June 30, 1955; Dr. Heinemann, President of the All-German
Synod of the Evangelical Churches, as quoted by Ivan Bilibin, "Religion in
the USSR", The New Leader, November 1, 1954.
25. Bower, loc. cit.
26. Anderson, loc. cit. ; Mr. Parlan's statement appeared in the New York
World-Telegram and Sun, April 2, 1956.
27. Anderson, loc. cit.
28. New York Times, April 30, 1951; American in Russia (New York, 1955),
p. 303.
29. Zhurnal, 1957, No. 2.
30. New York Times, August 3, 1955.
31. Komsomolskaya Pravda, December 18, 1953; Uchitelskaya Gazeta, July
28, 1954.
32. Trud, July 25, 1954.
33. Bilibin-, loc. cit.
34. Anderson, loc. cit.
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STAT
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LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP
by
Herbert E. Bowman
The line of development in Russian literary and historical scholarship
during the past one hundred years follows the pattern of a rilsing, and falling curve.
The curve is neither smooth nor symmetrical, and of course it does not begin from
zero in 1861 or fall to zero in 1958. But the general line is an upward movement
from 1861 on into the twentieth century and until the decade of the twenties, after
which the movement of the graph is generally downward. In this it follows the
progress of Russian cultural existence, as scholarship in the humanities can
probably always be expected to do. Coming late into modern consciousness, Russian
intellectual life exploded into a profuse floweYing in a very short time; but seldom
has any culture exhibited the suddenness with which Russian vitality in the humani-
ties was overtaken by sterility. It may be possible for the physical and natural
sciences to remain relatively free of binding ties with the inner life of a nation;
but such areas as literary criticism and historiography are bound to reflect the
sense of lie that pervades a national culture, for they are essentially expressions
of opinion, of_attitude, of outlook on human affairs. If, for example, the Soviet
Union had produced a great literature, we would surely be forced to revise our
judgment of the Soviet world.
? A com-parison of Russian achievement in literary scholarship, on the one
hand, and historical scholarship, on the other, would probably have to be made in
favor of the field of history. Russian and Soviet intellectual life has been marked
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by a dynamism of concern for the problems of historical existence, of the historical
destiny of-Russia, of the role that Russia has played and is to play in the world.
One of the basic appeals of Marxism for the Russian intellectual is that it provided
a key to the interpretation of historical fate and historical process. Certainly
other modern cultures have been concerned with devising a philosophy of history;
but seldom has this interest been pursued with more life-and-death urgency. And
of course the cataclysmic nature of historical events in the Russia of the last
hundred years makes amply appropriate such intellectual concern with the realities
of history.
Especially within the circumstances of Russian historical existence in the
modern period, it would be natural to expect that Russian historical writing would
be chiefly devoted to the history of Russia itself. But Russian achievement in non-
Russian fields of history-writing has also been considerable. Many eminent Russian
students of non-Russian historical subjects could be named. Paul Vinogradov, a
distinguished scholar in English medieval history, attained something like the ulti-
mate in recognition by becoming a professor of English institutions at Oxford. In
the same class belong Michael Rostovtzeff in Greco-Roman history, Vasilii
Vasilevsky in Byzantine history, or Maxime Kovalevsky in European medieval
history. Perhaps no country in Europe outside of France itself has devoted so
much scholarship to the French Revolution and its intellectual backgrounds. A
Russian historian has claimed that the Russian scholar, by his distance from Europe,
has the advantage of a greater objectivity. 1
By comparison with general historical writing, Russian literary history
and criticism is perhaps a lesser achievement. The comparison with scholarly
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study of Russian literature carried on outside of Russia is interesting. Perhaps
final judgment on such a comparison should be suspended; perhaps one could com-
promise by deciding that the best general history of Russian literature is the
history of Prince D. S. Mirsky, who might be claimed by both Russian and English
intellectual life. 2 As for Russian literary scholarship, for all its accomplishments,
it has hardly been worthy of the great literature that has lain at its disposal.
Perhaps the chief blame-must be 'given to the fact that Russian literary criticism
was from itS: beginnings involved in a tradition of "civic" or "social" criticism
which by the very seriousness of its concern for the work of literary art tended to
encumber the flight of imaginative esthetic criticism. Of course one can find es-
thetic perceptivity and imaginative scholarship in modern Russian criticism; but
the examples are scattered. Nineteenth-century social criticism joins forces with
Soviet literary policy in so dominating the field of literary scholarship that the
finest Russian critics remain a relatively obscure minority.
Yet for all the fluctuations and inadequacies that might be detected,
Russian literary and historical scholarship during the past century has surely lived
through its period of greatest achievement. If the preceding statement carries a
suggestion of an-obituary notice, it is probably fitting. There is a good chance
that the period from the middle of the nineteenth century until approximately 1930
will stand for a -long time to come as the golden age of Russian literary and histori-
cal scholarship:- Yet even today, in a period of far less achievement, Soviet
scholarship in these fields does at least continue to display the characteristic that
has always constituted the distinction of modern Russian intellectual life in the
humanities: -nimely, its close engagement with the problems of contemporary
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Russian society. Rus-sian originality in these fields has always been an originality
of spirit even- more than an originality of mind--a distinctive force of motivation
more than a distinctive content of thought. So great has this-intellectual and moral
dynamism been, in fact, that it has constantly threatened to destroy the precarious
structure of objective and imaginative scholarship. Literary scholarship in parti-
cular suffers at the hands of the critic who insists upon taking a moral or a moral-
istic -stance. The writing of history also probably suffers from too much moral
fervor. And yet it is precisely this highly charged moral fervor that seems a
special mark of Russian intellectual life, a world into which the non-Russian student
enters as into an arena.
Both literary and historical studies, from the time of their modern be-
ginnings in the beginning of the nineteenth century, were motivated in Russia by the
drives inherent in a developing national consciousness. The beginnings of modern
Russian historiography lie partly, it is true, in Germanic scholarship with its ideal
of vast documentation. But there is another and more natively Russian foundation
of Russian historiography: namely, that represented by the first "Philosophic
Letter" (1836) of Peter Chaadaev. The questions that Chaadaev raised, questions
of Russia's destiny in the world, were soon to be elaborated into a great intellectual
controversy that provided a major stimulus to nineteenth-century historical thought
in Russia: namely, the quarrel between Slavophile and Westerner. Is Russia part
of the Western world or not? Has Russian society developed through the same
historical stages as Western society, or not? What special contribution to world
history is Russia called to make? In short, what is the nature of Russia's histori-
cal destiny? _These are the vast fundamental questions that moved and continue to
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move modern Russian historiography.
Literature and literary scholarship shared in this motivation kindled by
national self-criticism. In the literary field the argument between Slavophile and
Westerner did not occupy the central position, but the major concern nevertheless
was still a concern with the national life and its destiny. Here the questions became:
How does Russian literature represent Russian society? Have we a great literature
or not- -since art, as Herder, Schelling, and Hegel had shown, is the articulation
of nation-al culture? What is the role of literature in the developing national con-
sciousness? These are the questions that stimulated Russian literary criticism
from its modern beginnings; indeed, they remain the underlying questions until
today.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, Russian literary and historical
scholarship was well launched in the main directions it was to follow for a number
of decades. Scholarly activity had already been begun and major work had already
been done in-the preceding half-century--for example by Belinsky in literary criti-
cism and by Karamzin in historiography. By 1861, gathering energies in both of
these activities were beginning to find mature expression. The date is significant
as Marking the time of new freedoms in Russian life?and freedom to express it-
self was now a chief need of Russian scholarship. The new freedom was seriously
qualified, to be sure; and the decades ahead would bring periodical reversions to
the oppressive rule of Nicholas I. Thus the reforms that marked the beginning of
the reign of Alexander II included more independence for university administration
and faculty arid bigger salaries; but by the eighties an academic career of university
teaching was attracting very few, for familiar reasons: oppressive supervision
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and poor salaries. One does not have to wait until the Soviet period to find ex-
amples of scholars in trouble with the authorities; more than one historian working
in the latter nineteenth century had his career seriously disrupted or frustrated by
official disapproval. Yet the decades between the sixties and the twenties consti-
tute a period when intellectual freedom in Russia was as broad as it would ever be.
And at the same time both historical and literary scholarship had new materials
to exploit: _history could profit by the maturing national self-consciousness, and
literary criticism could find in the new great age of Russian literature a rich ac-
cumulation of materials for study. As the century moved toward its end, both these
conditions continued to prevail, and with increasing force. Historians coming
into prominence after 1861 had the advantage of relative maturity: they could look
back on an old feudal society that was passing, and they could also look back upon
an old historiography that had been too much under the spell of Hegelianism and too
much occupied with the everlasting Slavophile-We sterner debate. As for the field
of literature, 1861 is as good a date as any far the beginning of the major phase;
01,
so that by the end of the century the literary historian Vengerov could write that
Russian literature of the second half of the century had not Only surpassed the
achievement of any Western European country, but that in Russia literary achieve-
ment had surpassed all other areas of Russian cultural accomplishment. The
result is that the annals of Russian historical and literary scholarship during
these years are filled with great names and great works.
For purposes of description, it would be simpler to take historiography
and literary criticism separately. But if they are considered together, one can
make an interesting discovery: namely, that they both move toward the same goal,
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the best name for which is scientific method, if we keep the phrase broad in its
meaning. The greatest material riches in both fields consist of individual mono-
graphs, an impressive accumulation of distinguished separate studies. But moving
through this activity of producing more and more critical and historical studies
runs a mounting drive toward scientific synthesis. In history, that effort found its
culmination in Marxism. In literary criticism the same effort culminated in
Formalism. Marxism and Formalism may be unhappy bedfellows, but the interesting
fact remains that each of them represents a-similar effort to be done with old ideo-
logical arguments and to strive for a purity of scientific objectivity. The "slap in
the face" of the older social, civic, utilitarian criticism that Fo'rmalism repre-
sented is a gesture of the same sort as Pokrovsky's repudiation of all Russian
historiography before himself. To cite Pokrovsky as an exponent of scientific
method may seem questionable, especially since he was as effective as any single
scholar could be in destroying the edifice of pre-Revolutionary historical science
in Russia, which had been moving more and more progressively toward the goal of
universality. Yet the emergence of Marxism in Russian historiography can still
be seen as a final destination of the drive toward system in the writing of history.
In their increasingly lively pursuit of synthesis, both historical and
literary scholarship of the pre-revolutionary period is filled with ambitious projects
of wide scope. In the field of history, big studies are undertaken--and usually left
unfinished. One has the impression that anything under five volumes is only an
"essay" (opyt) or a "sketch" (ocherk)--as witness Ikonnikov's essays on Russian
historiography in two massive volumes4 and Miliukov's sketches of Russian culture
5
in three volumes. Among the producers of mammoth works are numbered some
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of the most distinguished historians of the era after 1861. A leading example is
Sergei Solov'ev with his 29-volume Historyoof Russia:from the Earliest Time s6--
which death prevented the author from bringing up to the nineteenth century. A
similar ekample is Nicholas Kostomarov, whose Monographs and Researches fill
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20 volumes. A similar ambitiousness marks literary history in the era after 1861,
but it takes a qualitative rather than a quantitative form: the works of literary
scholarship are not so enormous in size, but they are broad in scope, assuming as
a necessary part of their jurisdiction the whole history of society.
The large size of many historical works of the pre-revolutionary period is
partly the expression of the effort of Russian historical writing to make its outlook
more and more inclusive. Increasingly throughout the latter half of the nineteenth
century and into the twentieth, Russian historical writing was concerned with
elaborating a conception of a total moving structure of institutional life. Russian
historiography from 1861 until the Revolution is thus marked by an increasingly
_V
sociological orientation, a broadening of view to include all aspects of the national
life, and a search for what it hoped could be established as laws of societal evo-
lution. Into-this context it was easy for Marxism to move, although Marxism im-
posed a doctrine upon a historical science that had been free to search for observ-
able patterns-.
In its move toward a conception of society as a total moving organism
Russian historiography of the latter nineteenth century corrected two major de-
ficiencies in?previous Russian historical writing: 1) an exaggerated veneration,
learned partly' from German historical scholarship, for facts and the accumulation
of facts; and' 2)an overvaluation of the higher strata of Russian society, of the
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state, of the Tsar, as well as an overvaluation of the Great Russian people, in
shaping the national history. As Russian historical writing developed, it made
progress in transcending its earlier factualism in favor of historical synthesis,
and in that synthesis it worked to include all the social strata and all the ethnic
elements that had helped to shape the national history. Veneration for facts is
hardly a fault in a historian, and the amassing of facts without adequate interpre-
tation which marks much of nineteenth-century historical scholarship in Russia at
least served the purpose of providing the materials from which history could be
written. Perhaps the writing of history should always begin with the gathering of
too many facts. The second limitation mentioned above, that of a Tsar-centered,
state-centered, Great-Russian-people-centered history, is not only a serious
fault but one that is not corrected easily. If a movie of modern Russian histori-
ography could be opened with a scene of Karamzin composing his History of the
Russian State and handing pages of his manuscript to Alexander I for approval, it
would have to end with the picture of the Soviet historian as a state employee.
The first great step in expanding the view of the Russian historian was to
move from writing histories of the Russian state to writing histories of the Russian
people. This was a shift in history-writing that was not long in coming, since
many of the dominant ideological camps of nineteenth-century Russia had their
reasons for favoring an emphasis upon the people: not only the Slavophiles and
the Populists, but also the radical Westernizing intelligentsia, and then also the
school of liberal Westerners, which provided the leading writers of Russian
history. Slavophilism had provided the first major support for the claim of the
common people to a place in Russian history, and it was the ranks of the
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Slavophiles that produced in Ivan Beliaev one of the first academic historians to
take up the cause of the peasants. 8This emphasis was further extended by later
historians,' for example, Shchapov, the Populist tendency, who not only continued
to argue for the importance of the peasant in Russian history, but who sought the
physical and anthropological bases of a historical process that had been too much
assigned to the "leaders. " The radical intelligentsia, on the other hand, who had
other reasons for arguing in support of the people, joined forces with conservative
Slavophile sentiment in decrying the absence of the peasant from the annals of
Russian history. Of course this radical stream of thought could have no place in
the academy, and it was interested in publicizing an ideology rather than in scholar-
ship; but a writer like Chernyshevsky certainly represents a correction of that
voicelessness of the people that mars the work of a historian like Karamzin. In
the strict annals of history writing it is the historians of liberal tendency who made
the greatest contribution to this widening of the base of history. Major historians
of the latter nineteenth century like Soloviev, Kayelin, Kliuchevsky, Semevsky,
Miliukoii, all gave due weight to the importance of the common people, not so much
out of motives of political ideology as because a broad conception of Russian
history seemed by this time impossible without a scholarly reckoning with the
existence of the popular masses.
Recognition of the role of the people was sure to come in Russian historical
scholarship: almost every major intellectual influence of the nineteenth century
favored it. Much less inevitable was the qualification of a predominant Great
Russian bias. This was a much more complex problem. A problem, indeed, that
never got solved: certain promising lines of development were just getting laid out
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when the revolution reversed the trend, until today the glorification of the Great
Russian people seems almost the main task of the Soviet historian.
The widening of historical vision beyond the Great Russian capitals was
greatly forwarded by historians of Ukrainian or other non-Great-Russian origin,
who by reason of their ethnic origins could feel the bias in Russian historiography.
Kostomarov: Shchapov, and Hrushevsky are three important scholars who might
be taken as representative in this connection, Shchapov being of partly Buriat origin
and the other two Ukrainian. Such scholars were simply insisting upon the evident
fact that Russian history did not always proceed upon a schedule drawn up in Moscow
or St. Petersburg--but it was an insistence that did not always make them popular,
when even a historian of the stature of Solov'ev still carried the mark of Russian
messianism. Purely patriotic conceptions of Russian history might be relatively
easy to outgrow, as the best of Russian historians did succeed in outgrowing them;
but the emphasis upon the Great Russian people, who after all occupied the center
of the historical stage, was not an emphasis ea6yito change.
One promising school of thought, passing beyond the particular contributions
of historians-of minority origins and building toward a new geopolitics of Russian
history, was Eurasianism. As the name implies, this conception of Russian
history was based on a conception of Russia as belonging to both Europe and Asia
but representing an entity in itself, distinct from both Europe and Asia. This
school of thought not only brought a centrifugal influence to bear upon the standard
Great Russian bias, but it broadened Russian history by placing it within the main-
stream of Eurasian and universal history. But Eurasianism remained more a
conceptual frame of reference than a consolidated school of historiography, and
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like all the promising tendencies of pre-revolutionary historiography it was fated
to receive little encouragement when the Soviet period really got under way.
Just as historical scholarship made great d.dvances toward broadening its
outlook and establishing itself upon a sound scientific basis, so also literary
scholarship of these years showed increasing promise of intellectual fulfillment.
One might question whether that fulfillment ever came. By the twentieth century
many new starts were made in the study of the craft of poetry and prose, but per-
haps it must still be concluded that Russian literary scholarship continued to find
its chief claim to originality in the distinctive character of social criticism. This
is not a critical tradition that makes for superior criticism. But it has been the
dominant Russian tradition, and one that has finally come into a kind of official
beatification in the Soviet Union.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the social or civic tradition in the
criticism of literature was already under full sail. Especially in its formative
period, this tradition was carried on most vigorously by members of the radical
intelligentsia, writing mostly for the fat journals, working outside of academic
institutions. Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, Pisarev--the names are sufficient to
recall the flavor of that school of literary journalism, which aimed deliberately at
what Pisarev called the destruction of esthetics"--and succeeded better than even
Pisarev might have wished. One of the principal tenets of this school of criticism
was that literary work is never to be considered as a thing of value for its own
sake, for the great art of literature is thereby belittled into an effete and trivial
hobby; instead, the work of literary art must be judged mainly by its power to
express and to transform the national life of Russia. Thus literary criticism
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included in_its province the interpretation of the condition of the national life, and
literary criticism as a result became something like a philosophy of society. One
would naturally expect that the more radical opinions of the radical intelligentsia
would not be adopted widely in the Russian university world; but at-the same time
their emphasis upon the social and cultural context of the literary work was sure to
be congenial to the professorial mind. And the fact is that the writing of Russian
literary history, both in and out of academic circles, came almost entirely under
?
the influence of social criticism. Not only were important studies made of the
heroes of Social criticism, as in Pypin's study of Belinsky9 and Steklov's study of
Chernyshevskyl?; but literary history became predominantly a history of social
and political ideas, and a history for the most part unfriendly to the older culture
of Russia. As for old Russian literature, it remained mostly a subject of more or
less obscure academic interest.
Although limited in outlook, this social-history school of literary scholar-
ship contributed many substantial studies, both of individual figures and of general
periods, .chiefly modern. Thus Skabichevsky's History of Russian Literature from
1848 to 1890_11 or Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky's History of Russian Literature of the
Nineteenth Century12 still remain useful to the student of Russian literature.
While many works of a popular and publicistic nature were being produced
in the field of literary history, the cultivation of what might be called a science of
literature was being quietly carried on in the academic world. Specialists in such
subjects as Russian folklore, Slavic linguistics, and comparative literature
numbered among their more illustrious members such names as Buslaev, Potebnia,
and Veselovsky, whose major work was done in the second half of the nineteenth
ainim
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century. And:so when the great age of the novel gave place to an age of poetry
at the turn of the century, and interest grew in the technical and thematic analysis
of the work of art as an end in itself, a certain foundation had already been laid for
technical literary analysis. The efflorescence of Symbolism at the turn of the
century, to be followed by such schools of poetry as Acmeism, Futurism, and
Imagism, had the effect of bringing-onto the center of the literary stage. the work of
technical analysis that had remaineda largely academic pursuit in the nineteenth
century. This movement toward new emphasis upon the specifically literary char-
acter of the literary work, as opposed to the older school of social criticism, was
a movement of many currents, which emptied into a main stream called Formal-
ism. The name is partly ironic, having been caught and used by the "Formalists"
after it had been thrown at them by their literary opponents. But the name does
serve to suggest a cult of the analysis of literary form which fought to replace the
older cult of ideology.
Formalism was part of an effort in Russian literary scholarship to create
something like a "science of literature"13--a term, like "theory of literature, "
that comes into increasing use at this time--which would transcend the merely
personal or partisan opinions of the older criticism. It aspired to greater techni-
cal knowledge of the materials of literature, both Russian and comparative. It
was thus disposed to receive assistance from academic scholarship in such fields
as linguistics and classical philology. By their special interest in poetics,
Formalist students made valuable contributions not only to the study of Russian
verse in its-technical aspects but to the study of "classical" Russian poets like
Pushkin, who had been conspicuously neglected or crudely interpreted by
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nineteenth-century criticism.
Formalism in its major intention thus represents an emphasis that could
not help but invigorate Russian criticism, too long-given over to critics with too
many extra-literary interests and missions. It also represents a welcome re-
newal of interest in poetry and poetics, subjects much neglected heretofore. In its
total effect, therefore, Russian Formalism brought a rich fertilization into the study
of literature. But at the same time it exhibited weaknesses and extravagances.
The sophisticated refusal to avoid looking for meaning in the work of literary art,
in favor of analyzing linguistic and stylistic devices, is onesided. The literary
artist is, or should be, a craftsman in language; but he is also, or should be,
saying something. The. danger of "formal" analysis always is that it will pay such
meticulous attention to how the author is talking that it will neglect to listen to
what he is saying. Russian Formalism suffered from this fault, partly no doubt in
extreme reaction against the opposite fault among the social critics of looking-only
for literary messages. A fully mature literary criticism would be one that managed
to combine both of these concerns, and in fact to see them as one single concern.
This ultimate maturity was doubtless promised for the future to Russian literary
scholarship, if the free evolution of literary study had been allowed to continue.
Already in the twenties, just before its demise, Formalism could be observed,
especially in Zhirmunsky and Tynianov, and even Eikhenbaum, reaching beyond
its original concentration upon technique into a broadening interest in the non-
literary realities surrounding and affecting the work of literary art. But with the
consolidation of Soviet literary policy, free evolution was replaced by doctrine.
Social criticism and Formalism are the thesis and antithesis; but the world of
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Russian literary scholarship still awaitt a synthesis.
With the advent of the Revolution, Russian scholarship was not abruptly
diverted from its course. In fact, the main tendencies of the- pre-revolutionary
period continued to work themselves out for at least a decade. Formalism, indeed,
had its heyday in the early twenties. In the field of history, Platonov might serve
as an example of a distinguished pre-revolutionary historian joining-the ranks of
the Soviet intelligentsia by becoming-director of the archives and library of the
Academy of Sciences and continuing, publication of monog-raphs based on his earlier
research.. That is not to say that scholarship was not seriously affected by the
bleak years of civil war and War Communism, as well as by the application of of-
ficial policy in intellectual affairs.
Even in the more drastic changes of intellectual direction brought by the
Soviet period it is, of course, possible to see revivals of traditional tendencies.
The whole temper and outlook of Soviet literary criticism, for example, is partly
a culmination of the traditions of the radical intelligentsia of the nineteenth century.
And if the effort is made to give literary scholarship a systematically Marxist
orientation; that effort too had been already started in the preceding century, es-
pecially with the writings of Plekhanov. Similarly Pokrovsky, whose school rose
into ascendancy in,the field of history in the twenties, was already a well-established
historian before the revolution.
What gradually emerged as new or distinctive in scholarship in the Soviet
period wason the whole a decline from the past. Scholarship, a precarious
structure ander the best circumstances, cannot endure the pressures of ulterior
motives. Whereas Soviet policy is intent upon turning scholars into publicists
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and upon using the materials of literary and historical scholarship to buttress
ideological or political platforms, as if scholarship had no ultimate -reason for
being. except utility. And since the Soviet scholar is an employee of the state, he
of course cannot work independently of official policy, even in his efforts to
circumvent it.
The lengths to which the distortion of scholarship by political programs has
been carried in the Soviet Union can shock even the well-informed, and documen-
tation would- only be tiresome. From the time of the early thirties until the present
time, the fact is that nothing-is done in the field of literary and historical scholar-
ship that does not in some way serve state policy. Even the relaxation of controls,
as during World War II, can still serve policy. Soviet literary criticism, for ex-
ample, has long debated such terms as Socialist Realism and later abstruse con-
cepts, equally amorphous, like "ideinost" and "partiinost'. " But when all is said
and done, there is no mystery about these doctrines: for practical purposes, they
simply serve as abstract cover names for the dictates of party policy. Nothing
reveals this more dramatically than the sudden shifts in party policy, always
followed by equally sudden and parallel shifts in literary criticism.
The situation in this regard has clearly worsened as the Soviet period has
proceeded. But the roots of the trouble were always there, for they lie in funda-
mental attitudes characteristic of Communist leadership from the beginning.
Even a thoughtful book like Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, published in
1924, can be taken as an unfavorable omen: too serious an interest in literature
on the part of leading officials does not promise well for literary freedom. Of
course the fact is that party leadershipLis not only interested in the intellectual
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situation but constitutes the first authority on every fundamental intellectual
question. -Nicholas I may have kept an eye on writers, but at least he did not
write books on linguistics.
Partly because of the poverty of Soviet literature, literary scholarship of
the Soviet period?ha.s done its best work on pre-revolutionary subjects. In criticism,
this has meant a revival of the social critics of radical bent, beginning-with
Belinsky. Such figures have been studied and their works published, always with
appropriate interpretations and frequently with quiet omissions, but nevertheless
in useful editions. Similarly the classics of nineteenth-century Russian literature
have been widely published and many materials published about classic authors.
Certain major authors may be commended for extraneous or distorted reasons:
thus Pushkin may be glorified as a rebel against oppression, a poet of the Russian
folk, etc., or Tolstoy as a partisan of the Russian people. Other less acceptable
authors, Dostoevsky especially, are the subject of deviously fluctuating policy.
Dostoevsky is the prime example of a dilemma in Russian literary scholar-
ship. Dostoevsky is a major Russian author, and so he must be glorified; but the
heart and soul of Dostoevsky's work contradicts basic assumptions of Soviet doctrine.
Such a subject calls for considerable astuteness in interpretation. The result is that
:scholarship on Dbstoevsky at times has simply languished, as during the thirties and
during the period of Zhdanovism after World War II. But this is not fhedavored
solution; such an outstanding example of Great Russian genius is simply too precious
to neglect. Yet -one could suspect that Soviet critics would be happier if Dostoevsky
had never existed. A Great Russian author of the first magnitude who seems alien
to the Soviet Weltanschauung--what a disaster!
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Dostoevsky may be the most striking example of the difficulties that.
nineteenth-century Russian literature can present to the Soviet scholar. But the
difficulty is far more general than one hard case. The fact is that the Soviet out-
look, especially by its optimistic view of man and society, is alien to the spirit
of many of .the greatest works of Russian literature. Dostoevsky is only the most
striking example; but Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Gonsharov, Turgenev, Tolstoy--
these are only some of the most distinguished names of writers who would find
unacceptable the predominant official Soviet attitudes toward the nature of man and
society. That Soviet scholars manage to -rehabilitate these nineteenth-century
greats for their own purposes proves little but the dexterity of Soviet scholars.
As for contribution to theory or method in the literary field, Soviet scholar-
ship was never very promising. First of all, Marxism is devoid of an esthetic,
and it is probably hopeless to try to evolve one from it. As if that were not bad
enough, by the time Soviet controls became firmly consolidated it was no longer
Marxism b?qt simply party policy that the scholar and critic had to reckon with.
The ultimate result of such a situation is that scholarship simply has no history,
only the party has a history.
For history itself as a field of scholarship, in contrast to literary scholar-
ship, it might reasonably have been expected that the Soviet period would bring a
brilliant development. After all, the Communist revolution was by nature a re-
valuation of history, at least of the history of Russia; and one of the important
claims of Marxism is that it represents a philosophy of history. Indeed one of the
unique features of Soviet society is that it is a society consciously planned to oper-
ate in conformity to a system of hptorical goals and principles, however vaguely
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defined. Those large questions of Russian national destiny and "world-historical"
-
role that nineteenth-century Russian thought had raised so anxiously became in
the Soviet period the decisive motivation of practical national policy. In such
circumstances it goes without saying that the study of history cannot remain a
matter of only academic interest. As a result historiography has been one of the
liveliest arts of Soviet scholarship. But in the last analysis the writing-of history
in the Soviet Union is interesting-mostly as a lively demonstration of ideological
and political controls, and their evasion. For the immediacy of official concern
that gives the study of history a vigorous sense of relevance also imposes a
vigorous regulation. Perhaps no activity is more important to the ruling authority
in a totalitarian society than the interpretation of historical fact. In the Soviet
Union the past must be rehabilitated not only for the purpose of vindicating the
ruling party and its current leadership, but also for the purpose of vindicating
Marxism. Toward the former end the history of the revolution and of the party
has had to be rewritten frequently; toward the latter end the history of Russia and
of the world must ultimately be rewritten. Unfortunately for the Soviet historian,
the supreme fact of Russian history for him--the revolution--contradicts Marx.
But this is only one example of the enormous difficulties under which the Soviet
historian is forced to work.
The Soviet historian's necessity of reconciling his work at every turn with
current ideological and political purposes forces every Soviet historical work to
lead a double life: as a description of historical fact and as a revelation of party
policy. Its latter function may be revealed in devious ways: thus for example the
choice of topic may tell more than anything said about the topic. So also the
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absence of studies may be revealing--as for example the reduction almost to no-
thing just after the revolution of the distinguished pre-revolutionary Russian
scholarship in church history.
The impact of the revolution upon Russian historical writing was im-
mediately discernible in the rapid rise to dominance of the school of Pokrovsky.
The revolution called for a Marxist interpretation of history with at least more
urgency than it called for a Marxist interpretation of literature. Yet, as in the
field of literary scholarship and criticism, Russian historiography in the twenties
still remained relatively free and varied, with non-Marxist historians continuing
to occupy important positions. But by the end of the twenties the school of
Pokrovsky, with its emphasis upon the universal application of the doctrine of his-
torical materialism and with its disparagement of the pre-revolutionary Russian
national past, had won the field. The fact that soon after his death in 1932
- Pokrovsky was officially repudiated does not alter his importance as a figurehead
of the rapid installation of ideological control in the field of historical writing. In
the crucial turning-point of the early thirties, the demise of Pokrovsky might be
compared to the demise of RAPP as signifying the move from a more particular--
istic authoritarianism to a more centralized control.
Following the consolidation of centralized control that marked Soviet life
in all areas after the First Five-Year Plan, historical scholarship in the Soviet
Union, like literary criticism, moved down a rather steep path of decline. ? The
reenforcement of control as such is probably not the primary cause of this decline,
but rather-the goals which history-writing was now forced to serve--all clustered
about the central goal of national self-glorification. All the advances that had been
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made in the past hundred years in developing away from nationalistic history to-
ward the application of objective scientific method now seem swept away in a kind
of reversion to early beginnings. The tendency to attach excessive importance to
the role of the state and of the Great Russian people, which historiog:raphy of the
past generation had been working to qualify, now assumes a more active role in
history-writing than ever before.
The effort of the school of Pokrovsky to interpret history in terms of im-
personal economic forces rather than national individuality, and its tendency to
take a negative view of the Russian past, obviously had no place in the new program
of Great Russian nationalism. In this radical about-face of the early thirties
there are inherent, it would seem, certain advantages for the art of historiography.
The national past in its historical individuality must at least be recognized and re-
spected if it is to be written about at all. And it is true that the nationalistic em-
phasis of the thirties, further strengthen-ed by the War, produced numerous
studies of Russian historical personalities that the impersonalism of Pokrovsky
had deliberately obliterated. But the advantages of renewed interest in the Russian
past were more than balanced by the tremendous damage to the science of history
inflicted by the cult of national self-glorification. Now even the glorification of
socialism, which it is a chief task of Soviet history to teach, comes to be used as
a demonstration of the superiority of the Russian people, since the Russian people
are the first people in the world to have achieved a socialist society. The his-
torical assessment of foreign influences in Russian history, which pre-revolutionary
historiography had worked to build up, now becomes the crime of "cosmopolitanism."
In this spirit Norman and Byzantine influences in early Russian history are, for
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example, systematically discounted- -not for reasons of respect for historical
evidence but for reasons of strateg-y.
Thus in both literary and historical scholarship the revolution has suc-
.c.eeded even beyond its conscious. intention in repudiating-the best of the Russian
past. The party in power, by its very effort to make scholarship serve a useful
purpose, has disappointed the great promise of humanistic scholarship in Russia.
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FOOTNOTES TO BOWMAN
1. V. Butenko, "La Science de l'histoire moderne en RussieY, Le Monde Slave,
II (1926), 120.
2. D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature from the Earliest Times to the
Death of Dostoyevsky (1881) (New York, 1927); and Contemporary Russian
Literature, 1881-1925 (New York, 1926).
3. S. A. Vengerov, Osnovnye cherty istorii noveishei russkoi literatury
(St. Petersburg,- 1899), pp. 5-6.
4. V. S. Ikonnikov, Opyt russkoi istoriog-rafii (2 vols.; Kiev, 1891-1908).
5. P. N. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul'tury (3 vols.; St. Petersburg,
1896-1903).
6. S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen (St. Petersburg,
1851-1879).
7. N. I. Kostomarov, Monografii i issledovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1868-1889).
8. For example in Krest'iane na Rusi (1859).
9. A. N. Pypin, Belinskii, ego zhizn' i perepiska (St. Petersburg,- 1876).
10. Iu. M. Sieklov, N. G. Chernyshevskii, ego zhizn' i deiatellnostl, 1828-1889
(2 vols., 2nd ed.; Moscow, 1928).
11. A. M. Skabichevskii, Istoriia noveishei russkoi literatury 1848-1890 gg.
(St. Petersburg, 1891).
12. D. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, Istoriia russkoi literatury XIX veka (5 vols.;
Moscow, 1911).
13. In Russian, "literaturovedenie. " Cf. "Literaturwissenschaft."
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STAT
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THE ORGANIZATION OF WELFARE SERVICES
by
Bernice Madison
Social welfare may be defined as the organized system of social services
and institutions, designed to aid individuals and groups to attain satisfying standards
of life an&health. It aims at personal and social relationships which permit in-
dividuals the development of their full capacities and the promotion of their well-
being in harmony with the needs of the community. Obviously, such services and.
institutions cover a wide range of activities, sometimes inextricably interrelated,
and almost always influencing each other profoundly as to form, scope and function.
This paper, however, is limited primarily to income maintenance programs,
with only brief discussion of those services whose major objective is to facilitate
normal growth in the individual, physical, emotional and intellectual, toward
maximum fulfillment. Poor relief, private charity, mutual aid and social in-
surance are considered along with some mention of services to Children, the handi-
capped and disabled, and those experiencing marital difficulties.
From 1864, when regulations controlling the rural self-governing bodies
(zemstvOs) -were promulgated, to the October revolution, three systems of eco-
nomic assistance functioned in Russia: state poor relief, local poor relief, and
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private charity.
Almost continuously throughout this time, responsibility for the
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administration of state poor relief was vested in the Ministry of Interior. Its
jurisdiction did not extend, however, to assistance issued to members of religious
orders, their welfare activities being within the jurisdiction of ecclesiastic au-
thorities.
The central government gave over all direction to poor relief work and en--
acted legislation. Where zemstvos and municipal governments had not yet de-
veloped, poor relief was centrally administered, either by state agents or through
state organs of poor relief (prikazy) in existence in each guberniia since 1775. It
should be noted, however, that state expenditures on poor relief were exceedingly
meager. In addition, the state created its own charitable institutions under special
law.
Among the latter, the most important were those in the Department of
Institutions of the Empress Mania Feodorovna, founded during the reign of Paul I
(1796-1801). Enjoying the patronage of succeeding empresses, the Department
enlarged its administrative sphere from charitable institutions created directly by
members of the royal family to those organized under private initiative and others
supported entirely or in part by public funds. To secure increased voluntary
support, the wife of Alexander III (1881-1894), devised the scheme of selling ranks
(chin), with appropriate medals, stars and ribbons, to members of the bourgeoisie
who wished to become noblemen. As payment, they made donations to charity.
Some benefactors were permanently attached to the Department and advanced in
rank from year to year. The top managerial body was named by the Emperor, and
the head of the Department held ministerial rank and a seat in the Council of State.
The next in importance were the Imperial Philanthropic Society and the Workhouse
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Patronage. Both controlled numerous institutions. The former was especially in-
terested in the incurably sick, orphans, children of poor parents, and those needy
who had retained partial work ability; the latter concerned itself primarily with
furnishing medical care, education and sheltered work to destitute adults and ?
children and with providing work-relief in famine-stricken areas on an emergency
basis. Finally, there were the parish patronages for the poor supported largely
by public funds from local communities and by private charity.
In 1864 the prikazy were disbanded and administration of local poor relief
was taken over by the zemstvos. In their functions were included the management
of charitable funds and properties and the administration of philanthropic activities
themselves. The latter encompassed orphanages and other types of children's in-
stitutions, hospitals, homes for the mentally ill, almshouses, workhouses and
correctional institutions - whether established under private auspices or by the
zemstvos themselves.
Most of the money needed to carry on these activities came from the interest
on capital turned over by the prikazy and from donations, the zemstvos being most
reluctant to assign any of their own revenues to public assistance purposes. The
small sums that were allotted varied greatly as between communities, from none
at all in many of them to 11 percent of the total budget in a few. Furthermore, the
proportion of the budget spent for poor relief - consistently its smallest item -
declined steadily, from 5.3 percent in 1890 to 1.5 percent in 1913.
The number of almshouses ranged from none in some provinces and
districts to 21 in others. Actually, the circumstances determining whether or not
an almshouse would be established in a given locality were largely fortuitous -
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availability of private gifts, for example. The almshouses were supposed to care
for the destitute, without discriminating against applicants from the lower social
classes. In fact, however, the latter were often excluded. As custodial insti-
tutions with inadequate facilities, almshouses became dumping grounds for every
kind of person who could not be sent off to Siberia or left to beg on the street:
side by side with the old and crippled, there were children, nursing mothers,
thieves, moral degenerates, and infectiously diseased.
Child-caring institutions, although available in most zemstvos, were so
insufficient that in rural areas abandoned and orphaned children were more or less
left to themselves. In most of them the chronically ill, the handicapped, the epi-
leptic and the mentally deficient children were kept together with the normal,
healthy ones. Orphans were maintained in institutions up to a certain age and then
were distributed among peasant families paid by the zemstvos for their upkeep.
Adoption, although practiced, was infrequent. In 1912 special correctional insti-
tutions for children existed in two zemstvos only.
Data for 1912 indicate that in that year 40 provincial zemstvos spent more
than 4. 2 million rubles on various. types of aid to the indigent. Although lack of
information makes strict comparison impossible, this figure probably represents
- - -
an expenditure at least five times as great as the amount spent for similar purposes
by the prikazy - an increase that occurred over a period of 60 years which included
48 years of zemstvo activity. This fact seems to justify, to some extent at least,
the claim that the zemstvo released local creative forces and gave new impetus to
community effort on behalf of the needy and the helpless.
It inay be more meaningful, however, to look at these developments in
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relation to the then existing needs. The number of needy in zemstvo provinces in
1912 was estimated to have been more than 1. 5 million persons, for each of whom
even modestly adequate care would have required an annual expenditure of 200
rubles. Thus, in order to make universal provision at a minimum level, the
zemstvos would have had to spend 300 million rubles per year for poor relief in-
stead of the 4. 2 million which they did spend. Authoritative writers on this subject
felt that while none of the zemstvos could have raised sums of this magnitude for
relief of the indigent, they could have done better than they did by assigning for
this purpose more than an insignificant proportion of their budgets, by planning
and coordination, and by paying more than sporadic attention to the problems in-
volved. As for the proportional decline in the amount spent, it could not be justified
by a corresponding decline in need: no such decrease took place.
In 1870, the municipalities, reorganized, also became local self-governing
agencies. In poor relief, however, they accomplished relatively even less than
the zemstvos: in 1900, for example, their expenditures for this purpose in 33
provinces amounted to only three million rubles. The institutions supported by
this money for the most part housed the old, the infirm, the handicapped and the
incurably-ill. Among them there were also some homes for children, establish-
ments where the poor could live rent free, and a few others where free or cheap
3
meals were provided.
The formalities imposed by law placed so many obstacles in the way of
private initiative that until 1862 there were only eight charitable organizations
functioning regularly in the whole Russian Empire. In that year, the Ministry of
Interior was invested with the power to approve the founding of charitable and
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mutual aid societies, and shortly after 1890 it issued a series of model regu-
lations and authorized local police chiefs to approve the formation of those charit-
able societies which conformed to one of the several models.
This facilitating move released a flood of activity, so that by 1900 there
were 2, 750 ..charitable organizations which between them helped nearly three-
quarters of a million persons. This number, however, included not only those who
received ec?anomic aid, but also those who were given free education and medical
. care. This relatively extensive provision gave private charity a preponderant in-
fluence in income maintenance programs. It also emphasized the failure of state
and local efforts to meet existing need: private charity was in fact partly making
up the deficiencies in the public sector.
Official sources show that in 1899 the total network of philanthropic organi-
zations - under state, church, zemstvo, municipal and private auspices - numbered
14, 854 with a capital of 405 million rubles. From the fragmentary data at hand,
it is not possible to give a full accounting of expenditures, numbers aided, or the
kinds of assistance and services offered. It seems clear, however, that a large
proportion of the sums spent went for health and education rather than for poor
relief, per se, although the need for free health and educational services stemmed
from poverty to begin with. If the estimate that in 1912 there were more than
three million needy persons in Russia provision for whose mere subsistence would
have required an annual expenditure of 600 million rubles is accepted, then it is
highly probable that these combined efforts fell far short of meeting the need. In
fact, the aid given seems to have reached only a part of the poor and was so
negligible and sporadic that it could not possibly prevent the ruin of any working
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class or peasant family faced by sickness, unemployment or serious natural
calamity. The plight of the poverty-stricken was aggravated, too, by the sharp
imbalance between needs and resources that was the universal concomitant of
local responsibility: where the need was greatest, the resources to meet it were
the meagerest. And then, too, some of the charitable institutions had such an un-
savory reputation (homes for illegitimate infants, e.g. , were often referred to as
"angel factories" by the populace!) that people avoided them unless practically
desperate.
These facts go a long way to explain the persistence of widespread begging
and vagrancy which apparently defied all measures to curb them, however re-
pressive and cruel, that characterized the Russian scene throughout the period
under discussion. In all communities there were many old, handicapped and sick
people who had a clear claim to economic assistance, but who resorted to begging
because institutional facilities were insufficient and sometimes frightening and
outdoor relief was non-existent in many places. Given this paucity of resources
and the traditional willingness of the Russians to give alms, the police could not
cope with the hordes of beggars who roamed the streets and the country-side.
There were villages whose entire populations lived by begging. Writers dealing
with the problem used the words "elemental, " "all-enveloping, " "endless, "
"hopeless," and "uncontrollable" to characterize it. Consequently, begging while
officially forbidden, was in fact quietly encouraged for the impotent and tolerated
for the able-bodies who slipped by the authorities in charge of law and order.
Actually, in some localities there existed lists of legal beggars - lists not per-
mitted by law, but set up by administrative fiat. The situation was especially bad
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in rural areas: if there were no almshouses, the authorities would occasionally
board some of the poor with alternate households for varying periods of time; but
in most instances nothing was done for them at all.
In Tsarist Russia, one of the earliest methods of protection against the
consequences of unemployment was the mutual aid society which first came into
being in 1859; by 1900 there were approximately 300 such organizations. The origi-
nal purpose of the workers who joined was to secure themselves and their families,
by union, against the consequences of illness, disability, unemployment and death.
Gradually, however, the societies began to consider matters and engage in ac-
tivities beyond the scope of their original intent, such as the creation of schools
and libraries, a shorter working day, regulation of relations with managements,
holding periodic congresses, and finally, petitioning the government concerning
working conditions and setting up strike funds. The transformation of mutual aid
societies into trade unions - often repressed by the Ministry of Interior and the
police - was advanced by the spread of the mutual aid movement among the prole-
tariat of the growing large-scale industry, especially among the metallurgical,
textile and typographicalworkers. Data for the year 1906-1907 concerning
106,463 union members show that they spent on mutual aid slightly more than a
5
ruble per member. It seems clear that this type of help reached a relatively
small number of the people who needed assistance and that its benefits were in-
significant and sporadic.
The earliest social insurance legislation in Russia, passed in 1861 but
inoperative until 1893, sought to give some protection against work-connected
illnesses, injuries and deaths to workers in mining, the railroads and the Navy
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Department. It created insurance societies (tovarishchestvos) whose revenue was
largely derived from an equal tax on employers and workers. The administrative
organs- executive committees and control commissions - were composed of
representatives from employers, labor, and the state. Both pensions and tempo-
rary benefits were exceedingly low, and by 1910 administration for the 22, 000
members was still complicated by many practical difficulties.
One of the results of widespread strikes in 1902 was an accident and death
compensation law passed in 1903 which covered workers in factories, mines and
foundries, and which was subsequently extended to government employees. Its
main contribution was that it recognized the professional risk principle; that is,
it placed responsibility for accidents resulting because of or during work on the
employer. It did not, however, introduce compulsory insurance and was weak
from many other points of view: employers, individually accountable, frequently
could not or would not pay claims; benefits were denied on grounds of negligence
by the worker; administration was entirely in the hands of employers and officials.
Railroad workers enjoyed a somewhat more advantageous position since they were
represented in the special committees which administered the funds, but even in
their case, management contributed only one-half the amount paid by labor.
As for financial assistance during non-work-connected illness, no corn-
--
pulsory provision existed until 1912. Voluntary arrangements, however, pro-
vided lour million rubles for this type of assistance in: that Year, three-fourths
of this amount coming from employers and one-fourth from workers. Such ar-
rangements were of four kinds: funds into which contributions were made by
both employers and workers; commercial insurance purchased by employers;
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collective agreements which included sickness benefits at the expense of the
employer; and funds resulting from fines on workers. Fines could be levied by
individual employers, purportedly to maintain discipline, but in fact frequently
in order to produce additional revenues for themselves. The law of 1866 curbed
some of the worst abuses by requiring that the money, although managed by the
employer, be spent only on assistance to workers. Great variations in coverage
existed as between provinces, ranging from 31 to 100 percent. The percentage
was highest in those guberniias in which collective agreements were arrived at
following the 1905-1906 strikes. Actually, the revolution of 1905, for the first
time in the history of the Russian working-class movements, posed the demand
for social insurance as one of the political objectives of the proletariat.
Under the pressure of the 1905 revolution, the Tsarist government moved
forward with reforms initiated in earlier years, but as reaction set in, the desire
to act upon them cooled off. It was not until 1908 that curtailed proposals were
presented to the Duma and after four years of deliberation finally became law:
the Health and Accident Act of June 23, 1912.
This law covered workers and employees in manufacturing, mining and
foundries, vessels on inland waters, street-cars and auxiliary railroads. Severe
exclusions, however, limited its application to only 23 percent of the workers and
employees active in the labor force at that time. Benefits were available for
work-connected accidents, illness, maternity and death with those for accidents
financed by employers, while those for the remaining contingencies came out of
contributions by both employers and. workers.
For ws- ork-connected accidents, administrative organs at the lowest level
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were the tovarishchestvos controlled entirely by employers. The next step in the
hierarchy led to a provincial authority (prisutstviia), composed of workers', em-
ployers' and government representatives. This agency supervised the operation
of individual societies on the one hand, and carried out overall official policy, on
the other. The next higher echelon was the Central Social Insurance Council,
?-?
again made up of workers', employers', and government representatives, whose
job it was to determine policy and conduct fair hearings on appeal from the
prisutstviia. From it appeal could be taken to court which was the final arbiter.
For sickness, maternity and death benefits, the administrative machinery was
the sick fund (kassy) in each covered establishment, manned by both workers and
employers. From the kassy up, the structure was identical with that for the
tovarishche stvos.
The idea of establishing a single central government agency to operate the
whole insurance scheme did not appeal to the lawmakers chiefly because they felt
that such an agency would be unable to adapt itself to the variety of conditions ob-
taining in industrial establishments in different localities, and would make im-
possible active worker participation.
On the whole, the new law was extremely unpopular among the masses of
workers and employees, and its administration encountered numerous difficulties.
It fell short of workers' expectations in coverage, and the amount and duration of
sick benefits. There was also widespread conviction that treating work-connected
_
accidents as ordinary illness during the first 13 weeks was tantamount to trans-
ferring costs from employers to workers, a procedure which could not be justified
on practical grounds. The fact that worker contributions made up three-fifths of
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the sickness funds represented a step backward for those groups whose benefits
used to be financed by employers prior to 1912. The real merit of the 1912 law
was that through the kassy it recognized the right of workers to participate in the
organization and enforcement of measures concerning their welfare. The im-
portance of embodying this right in law was a victory over those experts, em-
ployers and officials who had maintained that the intellectual level of the Russian
worker was too low at that time to permit of such participation. 6
Under the weight of more pressing problems, the Provisional Government
did not give much attention to income maintenance programs. During its eight
months of existence, it did, however, issue three laws on social insurance which
added about 250,000 new workers to those already covered, returned the payment
of benefits during the first 13 weeks following a work-connected accident to the
insurance societies, and lowered workers' contributions into the kassy so that they
supplied half instead of three-fifths of the total. The prisutstviia, while retaining
their old functions, were changed in composition by a reduction in the number of
official representatives and an increase, equally distributed, in workers' and
employers' delegates. Women workers were permitted to vote for candidates.
Although employers were excluded from the management of kassy, they continued
to wield an important influence as members of control commissions.
There exists substantial agreement between Menshevik and Bolshevik
Writers that these changes added up to rather unimportant gains, exhibiting little
responsiveness to the social insurance demands of the masses. No reforms in
poor relief appear to have been attempted.
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During the period 1917-1957, three types of income maintenance and status
programs have been available in the Soviet Union: social insurance for the wage
and salaried workers; children's allowances for the entire population; and mutual
. 7
aid for those paid in kind or in labor-days (trudodm).
Having taken the position that the best form of insurance for workers was
state insurance, Lenin and other leaders in the Russian Democratic Labor Party
carefully studied provisions in the more advanced countries and gave considerable
thought to the major substantive and administrative problems involved. They con-
cluded that a sound social insurance program must embody four principles: (1)
It must cover all risks that interrupt income; (2) it must cover everyone working
for hire and-members of his family; (3) benefits must replace total earnings and
must be financed entirely by employers and government; and (4) the scheme must
be administered by unified organs, of a territorial type, in which the insured
exercise complete control. 8The party used this program as one of the major
rallying points in 1904, and after the 1905 revolution continued an active campaign
which exposed the shortcomings of the proposed Health and Accident Act. After
its passage, the party was directed to utilize the kassy to enlighten workers about
its inadequacies and the principles and demands of the party in this area. Thus,
under Tsarism, Lenin's party used social insurance not as a resource for im-
proving the economic, position of the proletariat, but as one of the weapons in
developing their class consciousness and strengthening organization among them.
On November 13, 1917, with the zeal that characterized the immediate
post-revolutionary period, the government announced its intention to create a
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-14-
social insurance system based on principles developed by the Social Democrats,
but going beyond them in one important respect; coverage would be broadened to
include the city and village poor as well as those working for hire:?In this way
the party-hoped to outstrip the capitalist countries almost overnight, in their slow
progress from outworn systems of poor relief to modern social insurance provision
built on the proposition that security from want is a fundamental right.
A?series of decrees implementing this position culminated in the general
Act of October 31, 1918 which extended coverage to all persons supporting them-
selves by their own work, added non-work-connected disability and unemployment
to the risks included in the 1912 law, and placed the entire burden of financing on
. employers. The pre-revolutionary administrative structure was radically changed:
the kassy were retained, and with their functions enlarged, became the unified
local administrative organs for all types of social insurance; all other agencies
were liquidated. Instead, from the kassy the hierarchy led to social insurance
management boards, attached to the Commissariats of Labor in the Republics and
at the center.
In practice, the new arrangements encountered numerous and often insur-
mountable difficulties. The insurance of peasants, artisans and home workers
never materialized at all. Even for the wage earners it was impossible to institute
social insurInce in the period of war communism. As the sole employer, the
state alone aontributed toward social insurance; since all workers had to remain
at the disposal of the state, they acquired the right to be maintained by the state
when unemployed; non--proletarian elements, however clear their rights to benefits,
?
were denied them. In short, everyone who received support got it from the state,
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either in wages or in "benefits." This system resulted in heavy burdens for the
employing establishments which were forced to pay contributions averaging as
high as 21-28 percent of payroll. These inordinate rates, as well as inefficient
administration, in some cases led to a failure to collect as much as 70 percent of
the payments due. Obviously, the sweeping objectives enunciated in the ardor of
the Revolution could not be reached; the Government found it impossible to meet
even minimum obligations. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy,
there occurred a drastic reorganization of the whole system of social welfare, in-
cluding social insurance.
The legal basis for the social insurance scheme is found in the 1936
Constitution which, in article 120, declares that "citizens of the USSR have the
right to material security in old age as well as in the event of sickness and loss of
capacity to work. This right is ensured by the wide development of social in-
surance of workers and employees at the expense of the state, free medical aid,
and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the toilers."
Additional benefits stem from provisions in the constitution implementing the
equality of rights of women.
The chief value of available social insurance expenditure figures lies in
indicating trend, rather than in showing strictly comparable absolute amounts. From
this point of view, it appears that during the 29-year period from 1925 to 1954 these _
disbursements increased 34 times, while the sums spent during the fifth Five-Year
Plan were ten times the sums spent during the first Five-Year Plan. These increases
are less imposing, however, when related to the rise in prices occurring during the
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same years. The latest major legislation, the pension law of July 14, 1956, by
broadening coverage and materially increasing benefits, raised the annual social
insurance bill by 13 billion rubles. While these developments do not necessarily
mean that the government assigns high priority to social insurance as a method of
meeting human welfare needs, they do seem to indicate that the trend upward has
been consistent and progressive. This deduction seems to be supported by the fact
that expenditures for social insurance have grown at a rate higher than the growht
of population, but lower than the rise in wages and salaries.
As for the division of outlays among the various insurances and services pro-
vided, pensions and benefits absorb by far the largest share: almost 77 percent.
The remaining funds are used for health, child welfare, and "other, "in that order
of importance, with only one percent said to be spent for administration.
An examination of the voluminous social insurance legislation on the Soviet
statute books, _ reveals that the whole scheme has been pretty consistently attuned ?
to certain basic principles which have undergone relatively little modification over
the years.
Abandoning the short-lived attempt at universal coverage in 1921, the
social insurance system narrowed the availability of its benefits to those working
for hire. No deviation from this limitation has taken place, although coverage has
been broadened by liberalizing the conditions governing the receipt of benefits, and
presumably by no longer having to exclude the "social origin" disfranchised. Other
members of the working population are covered by the so-called "socialist mutual
aid."
By 1955,- the overwhelming majority of the 48.4 million persons counted as
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workers and employees was within the social insurance scheme. The only ex-
clusions of significance were those who performed temp.orary and casual work for
private employers, members of nomadic tribes, and some individual hunters and
fishermen. By adding to the primary insured their entitled dependents, it can be
deduced that the social insurance system currently reaches about 40-45 percent
of the total population.
The risks to interruption of income for which social insurance accepts re-
sponsibility have been added to steadily. By now almost all the major hazards to
human life that result in loss or lowering of earning power or exceptional ex-
penditures are dealt with; namely, old age, disability (both work - and non-work
connected), death, and sickness (including pregnancy). In addition, long service
pensions are paid to certain office holders such as educators, agronomists and
veterinaries. funeral benefits are available for all the insured, and special bene-
fits for layettes and infant feeding are given in appropriate circumstances.
Furthermore, children's allowances, introduced on a limited scale in 1936 and
materially liberalized in 1944, strengthen the social security system in the creation
of a national minimum. In contrast to other benefits, these allowances are paid
to all mothers (not only to those who are workers and employees) who qualify; that
is, to married women and widows with three or more children, and in part to un-
married mothers whatever the number of their children.
Low temporary unemployment benefits - for only a few of the unemployed
and limited by a. stringent means test to those without any income whatsoever -
existed up to October 1930. At that time they ceased to be payable, unemployment
having dropped fo its lowest point. To what extent this drop was due to the demand
*4 -
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for labor generated by the first Five-Year Plan, on the one hand, and to the great
increase in population of the Corrective Labor Camps in 1930,- on the other, it is
difficult to say. That both these factors influenced the employment situation is un-
doubtedly true. Unemployment insurance has never been re-introduced. Presum-
ably the trade unions (in supersession of the former labor exchanges) have been
able to find employment promptly in occupations within the capacity of any able-
bodied men and women, although not necessarily in their own trade or at their
place of residence. For those needing to acquire certain kinds and degrees of skill,
training is provided free, accompanied by allowances for maintenance. Anyone
incapable of work must be medically certified, and is then dealt with under the
heading of sickness or disability.
With the exception of a few lump sum payments, benefits in the Soviet
scheme are related to previous earnings, rather than to need or .contributions. In
almost no case, however, do benefits equal the amount the beneficiary earned when
he was an active member of the labor force. In this respect the Soviets seem to
adhere to the famous principle of "less eligibility" enunciated by the English Poor
Law Commissioners in 1834 (and since then applied to the social security systems
of all capitalist countries) which expressed the view that publicly assured income
should never exceed the earnings of the lowest category of independent worker.
Behind it was_ the fear that a too liberal publicly assured income would, by-re-
ducing the economic penalty for not working, discottrage initiative and thereby
cause a drop in national output. At the same time, attainment of the security ob-
jective requires the assurance of a minimum adequacy in relation to the level of
consumption to which the beneficiary had been accustomed by the level of his earnings.
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Various devices are used in the attempt to achieve such adequacy. To be-
gin with, the benefit formula is weighted in favor of the low wage earners and those
who have lost the greatest degree of working ability. Secondly, statutory minimum
money benefits - set in 1956 at 300 rubles per month for old age pensioners from
the lowest paid categories - are established. That the 1956 adjustment in the
minimum benefit was long overdue is underscored by the fact that it was the first
since 1932 when the monthly maximum on which pensions could be calculated was
set at 300-rubles. How inadequate pensions were during most of the period between
1932 and 1956 may be surmised from the official statement that the modifications
introduced in the latter year raised the former minimum pension for old age by
six times, and the former minimum for all invalids and for survivors by six to
seven times. Thirdly, dependents' benefits and supplements for the services of an
attendant in the case of the totally disabled are added. And a fourth device is the
partial pension, granted irrespective of the work-record, and never permitted to
be less than one-fourth of what the full pension would have been.
The principle of differentiation is the reverse of egalitarianism (uravnilovka,
denounced by Stalin as a left heresy as early as 1931), which made it possible, ac-
cording to Soviet leaders, for floaters, malingerers and habitual absentees to re-
ceive benefits on an equal footing with udarniks and outstanding workers with long
and uninterrupted work records. Differentiation was introduced to correct this
situation by applying less stringent eligibility conditions and a more advantageous
. _
benefii formula in calculating benefits for "best" workers, trade union members,
and those in "leading" industries and unhealthy occupations. Although immediately
following its introduction there was some resistance to differentiation, it is now
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universal. Thus, social insurance is subordinated to broader objectives and is
used by the Government for strengthening labor discipline, encouraging Socialist
competition, and increasing the productivity of labor.
Social insurance benefits are financed entirely from contributions by the
employing establishments. Contributions are made as a percentage of payroll: a
certain percent of the wages, but not from the wages, is added by the enterprise
for social insurance purposes. The percentage of payroll is graded between different
enterprises according to the degree of risk which employment in them entails, the
range being from 3.7 to 10.7 percent. Private employers make similar contri-
butions. In this context, the payroll includes various types of payments - regular
pay, overtime pay, cost of payment in kind, commissions, etc. The main charac-
teristic is that all of these sums are paid, in connection with worker-employer re-
lationships. The rates for individual enterprises and employers are established
by the All-Union Central Committee of Trade Unions together with the interested
bureau and the Ministry of Finance.
Since 1938 the resources of the social insurance system have been
collected and spent in accordance with a single, centralized plan which is es-
tablished on the basis of the Five-Year Plan figures on number of workers and
employers and amount of wages and salaries. Centralized budgeting is apparently
used for equalization, made necessary by the unequal rates of premiums in the
different industries. In this way the central organization makes certain that every
insured person, regardless of the industry or locale in which he is employed,
enjoys equal opportunity for benefits. In the, past some local insurance organs
opposed this procedure, feeling that it led to surrendering "their" money to the
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central administration. This attitude arose in part from a deep-seated con-
viction that complete self-government is impossible under central direction.
'It will be recalled that almost a fifth of the social insurance budget is
spent on health and child welfare activities. In relation to the major pension and
benefit program, these are supplemental undertakings. The unions appear to be
seriously interested in them, however, because of their positive effect on lowering
morbidity, shortening the periods of illness, cutting down absenteeism, etc., all
of which, in turn, prolongs working ability, raises productivity and lowers in-
surance costs.
As a result of the merger of the Commissariat of Labor with the Central
Council of Trade Unions in 1933, the unions passed over from control of social
insurance to its direct administration. Since that time, there has been manifest
a trend toward decentralization, strengthened by the establishment of local paying
centers, one for each union. At the same time, policy determination has been
further centralized by the abolition of the several Commissars of Labor in the
Republics and the transfer of their social insurance functions to the All-Union
Central Congress of Trade Unions. The detailed, daily work is done by the factory
committees, together with their subordinate insurance councils, elected by the
trade unionists of individual establishments. 9
Undoubtedly, administration by trade unions has given a broad base on the
system, lowered costs and brought insurance activities closer to the working
masses. On the negative side, however, there is ground for thinking that in some
instances - especially when procedure is not minutely spelled out in the law but is
rather determined by discretion - the practical and the ideal are a step or two
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apart. For example, access to sanatoria is sometimes more dependent upon one's
"connections" in the trade union than upon one's state of health. The same is true
when children are selected for summer camps or for day nursery care.
Many questions might be raised concerning the Soviet social insurance
system. Among the most pertinent seem to be those in regard to coverage, benefit
adequacy, and the approach to children's allowances. It will be recalled that by
limiting its benefits to workers and employees and their dependents, the social in-
surance system extends to possibly 40-45 percent of the population. This would,
indeed, be a serious limitation if no provision were made for the remaining 55-60
percent. Since, however, this is not the case, the real question revolves around
the relative merits of securing against income loss through one rather than another
of several possible methods. In arriving at a decision concerning the choice of
method, many arguments, economic and social, might be marshalled against the
Soviet choices. On the other hand, equally strong arguments might be adduced to
support their position.
The quzestion of benefit adequacy must take account of the fact that adequacy
is a relative concept varying in relation to the standard against which it is measured.
Thus, if the standard is the replacement of previous earnings, then it can be flatly
asserted that Soviet provision is inadequate: at present, pensions equal 50 to 100
percent of forriier earnings. Once this standard is abandoned, adequacy becomes a
matter of arbitrary decision as to the precise differential between benefits and
earnings that will constitute adequate protection and at the same time carry out
other objectives of the program: the narrower the differential, the more "adequate"
the benefits since they are more likely to buy for the beneficiary the standard of
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living his wages bought. As stated earlier, the current minimum pension is 300
rubles per month; the maximum in some instances may go up to I, 200 rubles per
month. The scope of the differential may be deduced from the estimate that places
the current average monthly wage at 600-800 rubles.
Introduction of children's allowances indicates that the Soviet concept of
income security has extended beyond the mere assurance of continuity of income,
to include a concern about the adequacy of any given average level of income to
meet the needs of families with children. The Soviets have also apparently resolved
the conflict between cash benefits versus benefits in kind by providing both; cash
payments are made to families in proportion to the number of children in each,
and services and benefits in kind, of a nature which is pecularily appropriate to
the needs of children, are also available (creches, etc.). What is not clear, how-
ever, is why no allowances are paid for the first two children and why they stop
when the child reaches age five (except for children of unmarried mothers). The
only sound reasons for these limitations would be the presence of an income in
Russian families so high that parents could raise two children at an accepted level
without any outside economic help; and the presence of such varied and adequate
benefits in kind for the child from five to legal working age that cash benefits would
be superfluous. It is not likely that both of these conditions exist for the majority
of Russian children. As for the flat amounts paid as allowances, (flat sums are
paid because allowances are status grants) their adequacy is again a relative con-
cept. It depends on the decision that has been made as to whether allowances are
to furnish full support for the child, or only partial support which serves to help
parents carry out their responsibilities, but is not designed to relieve them entirely
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of these responsibilities. In settling for the second alternative, the Soviets have
brought themselves in line with the 34 capitalist countries that have this type of
protection and have reaffirmed the pivotal position of the family in bringing up the
future generation.
In post-revolutionary Russia, two characteristics distinguish mutual aid
from what-it was like in Tsarist Russia; its spread among large groups previously
not involved; its encouragement by the government (through subsidies and super-
vision), amounting in most instances to compulsion. Like other social institutions,
mutual aid is used to fulfill functions that further the entire plan laid out by the
leaders.
During the early post-revolutionary period, Trade Union Mutual Aid
Societies voluntary organizations did quite a bit to ease the lot of the workers at
times of severest need, when neither social insurance nor other types of aid were
adequate or certain. Wishing to use the societies as the "elementary schools of
communism, " the new regime required that each one register with a trade union.
In 1928 a model Act was issued which permitted some voluntary activity, but
?
slanted the main purpose toward encouraging udarnichestvo and socialist corn-
_
petition. While belonging to such societies is mentioned as one of the advantages
of union membership, little else has been said about them since 1935.
In 1931 mutual aid societies of a special type were authorized in 12 heavy
industries and rail transport. Financed entirely by government and supervised
directly by the factory committees, these societies soon became indistinguishable
from the overall social insurance organs. 10
_
When the Soviet government came into power, the Commissariat of Social
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Welfare was given the huge three-fold job of reshaping the Tsarist welfare insti-
tutions; creating new programs and services; and securing the active participation
of local orga-ns in the whole gigantic undertaking. It quickly became big and Un-
wieldy. Gradually, some of its functions were turned over to other ministries;
by now its sfrecial province is the management of assistance to all those unable to
work, the needy and the war invalids. Clarification and contraction of function
did not, however, alter the original purpose or the operating philosophy of the
Commissariat: it implements the principle of public responsibility in'accordance
with eligibility conditions clearly defined in the law, and its objective is to re-
habilitate as many as possible, and offer care and services to those who cannot
work, either in institutions or through money payments. Charity and indiscriminate
giving are ruled out, and a determined struggle is waged against all parasites and
idlers, with useful work as the most potent rehabilitative tool.
In the republics, the minister at the head of this department is directly re-
sponsible to the Council of People's Commissaries. The next stage is formed by
the social welfare sections of the regional administrative bodies which direct the
work of the social welfare institutions within their local competence. Lastly, the
primary authorities are the town social welfare sections, the local inspectors and
the town and village soviets' social welfare boards. All activities are financed by
moneys earmarked for them in the national and Republic budgets.
The model act regulating the activity of mutual aid societies in producers'
cooperatives was promulgated in 1929. Its provisions created benefits similar
to those in the social insurance ystem, financed by the members themselves,
however, with some subsidy from the government. Over-all policy determination
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and supervision were to be exercised by the Commissariat of Social Welfare.
Mutual aid societies' in the kolkhozy (krestiianskiia obshchestva vzaimopomo-
shchi) were first organized in 1921 for the relief of needy peasants and war invalids.
In addition, KOV were expected to protect the interests of agricultural workers
and small peasant households against the "kulaks. " With collectivization, the
societies became the mutual aid. organs for kolkhozy, their operations having been
regulated by the model Act of 1931. A society - serving either one collective farm
or several farms in a given area - may be established by a two-thirds majority of
the membership. It must be registered and is run by elective officers who are
supervised by the village Soviets and the social welfare authorities.
Finances are derived from members' contributions, proportionate to indi-
vidual earnings and fixed annually by the general meeting at not more than two per-
cent of earnings; payments from the common funds which cannot exceed two percent
of gross output; sums received from the social welfare authorities, and fines levied
by decision of the courts. A reserve fund must be set up. KOV are required to
assist survivors and members wh; are incapable of working because of old age,
disability, sickness, and maternity, and to improve conditions by organizing health
and welfare seivices. They also make loans to members in case of serious mis-
fortunes and for basic improvements such as the construction and repair of
buildings. 12
Thus, for about 55-60 percent of the population income maintenance takes
the form of-self-help. Since members of kolkhozy and producers' cooperatives
technically are not "employed" but are, rather, self-employed, they themselves
make contributions to finance the program. Although only scattered and infrequent
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references to this program appear in the literature, it seems clear that for kolkhoz
members at any rate benefits are lower than those provided by social insurance.
What proportion exactly of trudodni earnings they represent, it is not possible to
say. There is some indication, too, that the duration of benefits is less generous.
As far as the handling of funds is concerned, apparently there is no centralized
budgeting; rather, individual kolkhozy manage their own funds. This may mean that
kolkhozy which do not do too well economically have less available for benefits than
the more prosperous ones, and yet, it is likely that the former include proportion-
ately more members who need assistance than the latter. It is possible, of course,
that government subsidies may be used to offset at least partly the inequality of re-
sources that-probably exists, but nothing has been found in the literature that would
confirm this supposition. From references to standard rules governing eligibility,
it is clear that the principle of differentiation operates here as in the insurance
system.
There exist in the Soviet Union social welfare programs which emphasize
services for socially handicapped groups in contrast to centering attention on in-
come maintenance.
Of pa.rticular interest from a welfare point of view are the mutual aid
societies operating in the disabled persons' cooperatives. These came into being
soon after the revolution and, in spite of insufficient means and lack of acceptance
by local authorities, succeeded in raising morale among the disabled and in pre-
venting the-ir isolation from the general population. By 1927, they were recognized
by statute and in 1932 were required to join the mutual aid societies in producers'
cooperatives. They increased in size and importance during World War II, by
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1945 employing 200, 000 invalids of war and labor in the RSFSR alone.
While not closely comparable to sheltered workshops in other countries,
the disabled persons' cooperatives appear to serve a somewhat similar purpose.
Supervised by Social Welfare, they form an independent system, with all admini-
strators and controllers elected by the membership. Financial resources come
from members' entrance fees, subsidies from Social Welfare, etc. The All-
Russian Union of Disabled Persons' Mutual Aid Societies is the central admini-
strative body. While the major objective of the cooperatives is to improve the eco-
nomic position of the disabled, this purpose is in itself a service that makes life
for the handicapped more normal and richer from the psychological and social
points of view.
Services for the handicapped are centered in the All-Russian Blind and Deaf
and Mute Societies. The activities of both were regulated by special decrees in
_
1931 and 1932, respectively, which placed them under the supervision of Social
Welfare. Finances come from entrance fees, government subsidies, income from
workshops, enterprises, dramatic entertainments, concerts, etc.
The responsibility for children needing care outside their own homes -
dependent, neglected and emotionally disturbed children - is not lodged with Social
Welfare but with the local Soviets which have special commissions in charge of
_
this work. These commissions coordinate the activities of the Ministries of
Health, Education and Internal Affairs and of various social organizations in the
child welfare field. In line with a decree of August 21, 1943, special Suvorov
and Nakhimov military and naval schools were established for children whose
parents were killed by German occupationists.
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From institutions children may be sent to their own, patronat, or adoptive
homes, or may remain at the institution until age 16. Patronat appears to be a
more formal arrangement than foster care, but not as final as adoption. It is
based on a voluntary agreement whereby children between the ages of aye months
and 14 years are placed in families where they remain until age 16. The replace-
ment is carried out by the appropriate Ministry, depending on the age of the child;
in country districts it is made by the president of the village Soviet through the
kolkhoz mutual aid societies (and thus, under the direction of the social welfare au-
thorities). A contract, describing the responsibilities of both parties, is signed
by the placing agency and the family offering its home. The head of the family
becomes the child's guardian; the agency pays a set monthly sum for the child's
support and-supervises the home to make sure that the guardian carries out his re-
sponsibilities as agreed upon.
Adoption was reintroduced by the Family Code of 1926 because there ap-
peared no valid grounds for rejecting sincere applications from families wanting
to welcome a child; and it was known that a form of de facto adoption was practiced
on a large scale by peasants. The Court has the power to order a total break of
all legal ties with the natural family, so as to protect the child from intrusion on
his adoptive relationship. Adoptive placements are made only by statutory agencies,
and granted only if all the circumstances of the adoptive family are found on in-
vestigation to be normal for the upbringing of the child.
Little material is available on the treatment of juvenile delinquents. One
early document and a number of novels seem to indicate, however, that the persons
in charge have a good grasp of child psychology, and that they make a thorough
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study of each child's background - social, economic, physical, emotional and in-
tellectual - on which treatment plans are based. It also seems clear that the
punitive approach is not employed, but rather that the therapist seeks out and
builds on the positive qualities of each child.
Bureaus of legal aid for mothers and children, first organized in 1933, are
part of the public health system. In them women receive free counseling and
services to help them with problems arising out of living conditions, employment
and marital relationships. 13
Judicial counseling on marital problems is carried on by the courts, one
of whose functions is to prevent the dissolution of marriages, if at all possible, by
means of persuasion. Court procedure is apparently informal, permitting the
bench to discuss the situation in a permissive atmosphere, and "to urge a common
sense, practical approach to the spouses." Agencies for formal marriage counseling
that would employ the psychiatric approach do not seem to exist. 14
III
There hastaken place a profound and fundamental change in the concept of
social welfare as between pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, with elements of
continuity so-faint by this time as to be almost indiscernible. In Tsarist times,
in spite of stipulations in the poor law that want must be relieved, the poor person
had no enforceable right to relief. Whether he was helped or not depended on a
series of fortuitous circumstances beyond his control. And if he were not helped,
he had no way_of appealing to higher authority, no power to force the responsible
organs to give him assistance. As a final resort, he could beg - and he did, in
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many-instances, in spite of cruel punishment that this frequently entailed. The
only exception was the group of workers, about a fifth of those employed for hire,
who had a right to economic help under the social insurance laws. In their case,
however, the risks for which compensation was available were limited to sickness
and work-connected injuries, they themselves had to contribute a substantial part
of the benefits paid them, the sums they received were low in relation to wages,
and they had only a minority voice in administration. Because public provision was
spotty, inadequate and uncertain, many needy people sought material aid from
private charitable societies which, as a consequence, were unwilling to devote
sizeable resources for developing preventive and treatment-oriented programs.
As is always true of private charitable organizations, however, they could not offer
universal protection, either to all the people who needed assistance, or for all the
contingencies that made it necessary for people to seek help. Their boards
determined intake policies, eligibility requirements and the kinds and amounts of
help that they would provide. It is not surprising, therefore, that a considerable -
proportion of privately supported charitable facilities were available to the
"deserving" poor, the definition of "deserving" depending on the philosophy and
objectives of the donors, rather than on an unprejudiced or uniform concept. In
the public sector, as well, discretion ruled. With no fair-hearings machinery
available, the individual decisions of local officials were supreme, however
capricious or injurious some of them might be. As a rule, the assistance provided,
both tinder public and private auspices, was in kind, for the most part as support
in institutions, and occasionally as commodities to be used at borne. Traditionally,
assistance in kind is unpopular with the recipients. It is used by the donors when
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they wish aid to be deterrent and when their basic assumption is that those who
seek aid are almost by definition persons incapable of efficiently managing their
own affairs.
In post-revolutionary Russia, the right to economic assistance is enunciated
in the 1936 Constitution. If the citizen is a worker or employee, or a dependent
of a worker or employee, his economic aid will come from the social insurance
system and will be paid by his employer; if he is a member of a producers' cooper-
ative or a kolkhoz, it will come from the mutual aid society formed by him and his
fellow workers who will pay for it themselves (with some subsidy from the govern-
ment) because, technically, they are their own employers; if he falls outside of
both of these, his assistance will come from the Commissariat of Social Welfare
and will be financed out of general taxation. The first two of these systems will
aid him during-most contingencies that occur in industrial societies to diminish or
cut off income. Furthermore, he will be helped when no such contingency occurs,
but when the number of children for whose support he is responsible is deemed too
large for him to do a good job of raising them unaided. The third system (com-
parable to the public-assistance system in the U.S. in this context) is apparently a
residual program, the catch-all underpinning the entire income maintenance scheme
but gradually contracting as the main line of defense against income failure - social
insurance and mutual aid - grows stronger and more extensive. Throughout, as-
sistance for the most part is given in money or work so that the beneficiaries re-
tain the decision-making power over their affairs and are not set apart and below
the rest of the :population by being deprived of the universal medium of exchange.
Institutional care is available when the interests of the beneficiary are best served
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by it. Rehabilitative services, vocationally directed, are stressed, while pre-
ventive efforts appear to be continuous and consistent. Thus, private charity has
been abolished altogether, as inimical to the principles governing human relation-
ships in a socialist state, while the old poor law has been replaced by a modern
scheme of social security. Philanthropy and charity have yielded to social welfare;
social insurance, carried over in the form of mutual aid to those not working for
hire, has remained, but with coverage of people and of risks so extended that it
bears only a distant resemblance to its 1912 predecessor.
That this transformation represents substantial progress is obvious. That
this progress is largely the Soviet counterpart of the change in welfare service
throughout the world is likewise clear. That modernization has been achieved at
the cost of human suffering - denial of sorely needed help to the "socially inimical"
classes, taking away pensions from people who received them under the Tsar -
is well known. The question arises, however, as to whether the right to assistance
is fully, partially or not at all implemented, in the latter case remaining a mere
slogan. It would be most difficult to answer this question even if field research
were possible; without it, only cautious deductions may be hazarded. There is
little doubt that the resources allocated to social insurance during the first 10-12
years following the revolution were too meager to make effective implementation
possible. This was even more true of mutual aid and social welfare. Since the
first Five-Year Plan, there is apparent a more consistent and significant effort
to implement paper commitments, which, however, continued to produce only
partial results and necessitated arrangements such as the trade union mutual aid
societies. In the post-war era, and especially with the passage of the pension law
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of July 1956, implementation has gradually become more real in the sense of
reaching the security objective for most of the population to a meaningful extent.
Degree of implementation depends, too, on administrative procedure, and
especially on the availability of fair-hearings machinery. The social insurance
system does provide for appeal from lower to higher authorities in the trade
union hierarchy. Those receiving pensions from social welfare authorities may
take their complaints to the executive committee of the municipal Soviet; no in-
formation has been found, however, about appeal avenues in the mutual aid societies.
Presumably, a dissatisfied member may carry his grievance to the total member-
ship; perhaps he may also take his complaint to the social welfare authorities or
to the village Soviet. Both of these courses may be difficult or even impossible,
nor is it certain that reconsideration can be forced, after all. Nothing has been
learned, either, about the methods used by social welfare authorities in deter-
mining eligibility for aid of those who are excluded from the social insurance and
mutual aid systems and of those :who, although included, receive benefits insuf-
ficient to fulfill -even minimum needs. That such individuals and families exist
seem to be indicated by the official statement which, after enumerating the
covered groups, adds: "other invalids and needy persons, not included in the en-
umerated groups, are "made secure" within the limits of resources at the disposal
of social welfare organs. "15 How is need determined? Probably through some
form of a means test. If so, how much of the deterrent poor law - discretion,
relatives' responsibility, etc. - is still lurking in the procedure? To whom and
how do these people appeal if they are not helped? The pervasive silence on this
aspect of welfare administration may be motivated by the feeling that discussing
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it would be tantamount to admitting that the new society has neither eliminated
need, nor created a magic formula for meeting the problems that it creates. It
might be kept in mind in this connection, too, that traditionally labor has opposed
the means test as a humilitating method which cannot be objectivized or removed
from the discretionary power of the administrative officer.
Far-reaching changes have also taken place in the welfare administrative
structure. Under Tsarism, the Ministry of Interior was responsible for super-
vising public and private poor relief in its various forms. Its influence on day-to-
day administration was negligible, however, because the central government made
no grants-in-aid to the local authorities, set no standards, and used its licensing
power in a formal and inflexible manner. In relation to pauperism, begging and
,
vagrancy, the police rather than the welfare authorities had jurisdiction, with
their repressive and often cruel methods, which precluded rehabilitation and in-
dividualization. Locally, relief administration was in the hands of a multitude of
organizations, public and private, with the great variation in kind and amount of
aid available to any applicant that always follows local responsibility. Community
cooperation and participation were rarely mentioned. In social insurance, the
power of the central council, from the point of view of encouraging a uniform in-
terpretation of the law, was perhaps more tangibly felt, especially through its
_ -
right to_conduct fair hearings on appeal. Nevertheless, inequality of opportunity
to receive benefits probably existed at the local level because the resources of the
sick funds and the tovarishchestvos were circumscribed by the financial position
_
_
of individual establishments from which they were derived and in which they were
paid out.
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In the Soviet scheme, the different types of provision are related to one of
three central organs; to the AUCCTU in the case of social insurance; to the
Commissariat of Social Welfare in the case of mutual aid societies and assistance
outside the scope of either social insurance or mutual aid; and to the Commissariat
of Finance in the case of children's allowances. Close and continuous cooperation
between the three, at national, Republic and local levels, seems to exist. The
central organs, with policy-making and supervisory powers, apparently make their
position tangibly felt throughout the administrative hierarchy, not only by requiring
reports, making studies and inspections on the spot, but also through the central-
ized budgets which must have their approval. The question rises, of course, as
to whether this centralization is oppressive and crushing to local initiative, flexi-
bility and speed with which decisions that affect people when they may be helpless
and overwhelmed can be made. That it is oppressive is undoubtedly true. On the
other hand, there is some evidence that intervention by higher authorities at times
wields a benign influence by protecting individuals against local inefficiencies, con-
tributing toward consistency of policy and toward greater certainty that similar
treatment will:be-afforded persons in similar circumstances. In addition, at the
local level, administration by unions, mutual aid societies, social welfare au-
. -
thorities and Soviets, who work closely with groups drawn from a variety of local
citizens, may give more room than other areas of Soviet life for the "localism"
and "familism" which are known to act as defenses against the pressures of the
center. Social insurance councils - modernized vestiges of Tsarist sick funds
(kassy) - and all of the other local organs involved theoretically can make their
thinking known to the central authorities. To what extent they actually do is
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problematic.
Very little, indeed, can be said about the qualitative aspects of welfare ad-
ministration in pre-revolutionary Russia. The literature is devoid of any specific
discussion of this subject. From the general tone of the materials used, however,
it is clear that no professional training - in fact, no training of any kind - was re-
quired or available for welfare work. All activity was permeated by the charitable
approach, with the benevolence of those who carried it on being the only charac-
teristic constantly extolled, frequently in survile and exaggerated terms. There is
no mistaking, too, the condescension, sometimes genuinely kind but often coldly
indifferent, on the part of the givers and officials toward those who received. At
best, these attitudes frequently assumed that poor people were so weak or simple
that they could hardly be helped to escape perpetual dependency; at worst, they
showered cruelty and humiliation on those who could not defend themselves. It is
also obvious that the rehabilitative possibilities in work with the poor and the
socially handicapped remained largely unexplored, with the major effort directed to-
ward relieving stark poverty. As far as almshouses went, the only mention of
such possibilities was the sporadic attempt to provide work and conduct Bible
reading in a few places. In organizing work-relief in famine-stricken areas, oc-
casional effort was made to devote part of the sums to training some of the needy
in occupations they could practice after the emergency had passed. Even in
children's institutions, low standards marked not only the physical care, but also
the meager education offered. In its empire-wide study of children's orphanages,
the Romanovskii Komitet found only two that even remotely came up to the standards
this organization, modeling itself on Swiss experience, considered desirable. 16
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From the sums spent on the education of children from socially higher classes, it
may be assumed that its quality was somewhat better than for the rest of the
children brought up in institutions. Several writers also emphasized that welfare
work was often hampered by officials with rigid attitudes who were loathe to ex-
periment or to introduce already tested innovations.
Some idea of the quality of welfare services in Soviet Russia may be pieced
together from scattered and infrequent statements in the literature. Thus, in 1949,
we are told, "In the active cadres (in the trade unions) we have about one million
group organizers, over 1.2 million insurance delegates and social inspectors for
workers' protection, over one million members in wage commissions and over two
11
million voluntary social workers occupying themselves with welfare matters.
Apparently, the tasks of many of these 5.7 million persons were, in some respects
at least, similar to those of American social workers. Thus, group organizers
conducted cultural activities in clubs attached to employing establishments, at
first endeavoring to attract the more outstanding individuals who were interested in
some specific activity, but gradually shifting to a broad propaganda approach which
sought to "reach the masses" and to develop the abilities of the membership for
self-determination and initiative. As for social insurance delegates, their duties
are considered sufficiently important to demand a certain amount of preparation.
Some of the social insurance organs set up courses, call conferences and meetings.
Articles explaining the legal regulations appear in periodicals and are discussed
by paid personnel and volunteers. Volunteer "social workers" visit sick members
in their homes_; investigate and report on the home and employment conditions of
invalids, aged,_patients in psychiatric clinics and hospitals and alcoholics, give
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advise to spouses experiencing marital conflict - and intervene in many other situ-
ations created by "life. " What preparation, if any, they have for this type of work
,
is not clear.. The general impression gained is that there is much use of group dy-
namics and community organization techniques, but little recourse to therapy
through the one-to-one relationship. It appears, too, that the services given by
these "social workers" are for the most part of an envirmanental type, and oc-
casionally of a simple supportive type, when the "worker" gets to know his "client"
well and develops a friendly relationship with him. Nor has it been possible to as-
certain what training workers in the Commissariat of Social Welfare receive for
carrying on their jobs which in some instances, at least, demand a great deal of
varied knowledge and skill, as for example, in making and carrying through plans
for the rehabilitation of the disabled and the handicapped within the framework of
an inter-disciplinary approach. Again, group work and community organization
methods, with theobject of providing environmental and supportive help, seem to
be heavily relief on. Psycho-therapy, when used, is evidently carried out by
medical personnel only; there is no evidence that "social workers" are proficient
in this area. As for welfare services to children living outside their own homes
and to mothers and children who come to bureaus of legal aid, they are offered by
workers trained primarily for functioning in educational and medical, rather than
welfare, settings. It appears that these workers have a good grasp of the major
treatment tools known to modern psychology, including those advocated by the
followers of Freud. Treatment plans appear to be based on a thorough study of
each child's background - social, economic, physical, emotional and intellectual.
_
_
When dealing with emotionally disturbed children, the punitive approach is not
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used. Rather, the process is conceived to be in essence educational, with the
most constructive results expected from individualizing each child and building on
the strong and healthy elements of his personality.
One-common trait seems to characterize all of the welfare activities dis-
.
cussed: the Consistent reliance on useful work, adapted to the varied needs of
receivers of benefits and services, as the major therapeutic tool. Helping people
to enter or re-enter productive life, even on a partial basis, seems to be the main
driving force-behind all welfare endeavor and? the measure of its success. So in-
sistent and pervasive is this objective that one cannot help wondering whether
human needs which can be met only by relationship and pursuits that may be non-
productive in a conventional sense are neglected. One also wonders how much
genuine appreciation there exists for the plight of those who, through no fault of
their own but because of the imperfect knowledge and skill of their therapists, can-
not become productive, and to what extent, therefore, welfare services in Soviet
society are available for those "who only stand and wait" - the ultimate test of
man's humanity to man.
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4
FOOTNOTES TO MADISON
1. Special provision existed for veterans and their families. In addition to insti-
tutional care, the zemstvos issued to families of breadwinners called the
active duty, "supplies in money and kind--amounting to not less than one pud
and 28 pounds of flour, ten pounds of groats and four pounds of salt per month.
In 1912 legislation was passed making pensions available for disabled military
personnel and for families of dead members of the armed forces. In calculating
the amounts of pensions, sharp distinctions were made between officers, NCO's
and enlisted men.
2. Major sources used were: Direction Generale de l'Economie Locale du
Ministere de l'Interieur. L'Assistance Publique et Privee en Russie.
(St. Petersbourg, 1906); and 0. Imeretinska, Blagotvoritel'naia Rossiia,
edited by P. E. Lykoshin (St. Petersbourg, 1901).
3. Major sources used were: Boris Veselovskii, Istoriia Zemstva za 40 Let
(St. ? Petersburg, 1909); and Vladimir Trutovskii, Sovremennoe Zemstvo
(Petrograd, 1915).
4. Narkomat Sotsial'nogo Obespecheniia RSFSR, Sotsial'noe Obespechenie v RSFSR
k Desiatoi Godovshchine Oktiabria (Moskva, 1927).
5. Especially pertinent sources were: B. Liubimov, Sotsial'noe Strakhovanie v
Proshlom i Nastoiashchem (Moskva, 1925); and Yu. Milonov, Kak voznikli
Prof soiuzy v Rossii (Moscow, 1929).
6. The works most frequently consulted were: Three books by V. P. Litvinov-
Falinskii, Otvetstvennost' Predprinimatelei za uvechlia i smert' rabochikh po
deistvuiushchim v Rossii Zakonam (1903); Novyi Zakon o Voznagrazhdenii
Uvechnykh Rabochikh (1904); and Novye Zakony o Strakhovanii Rabochikh (1912);
K. A. Komarovskii, Strakhovanie Rabochikh v Rossii i na Zapade, Danskii,
B. G. ed., Vol. 1, (1st ed.; St. Petersbourg, 1913); A Vishnevitskii, Razvitie
Zakonodater stva o Sotsial'nom Strakhovanii v Rossii, (2nd ed., 1926); and
V. S. Gokhman, Ocherki po Strakhovaniiu ot Neschastnykh Sluchaev (Moscow,
1928).
7. Provisions for war veterans, governed by special legislation, have always been
administered by the Commissariat of Social Welfare, and, after the reorganization
of welfare gervices in 1921, took three forms: support for the severely disabled
(pensions or placement in homes for invalids), accompanied by training or re-
training; help in finding suitable work for the partially disabled; helping the
veterans to make full use of services in kind provided at community expense.
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Essentially, these provisions, integrated into those for all invalids, have re-
mained unchanged: currently, they comprise the payment of pensions, as-
sistance in kind, and assistance in the form of work. What has changed is the
quantity and quality of these services. There has taken place a substantial
improvement and expansion, as a result especially of the impetus given to this
work by the second World War.
8. Lenin, Sochineniia, 4th ed., 1948, p. 427.
9. A voluminous literature is available. Among the most helpful works were the
follGwing: Krasnopolskii, A. S., Osnovnye Printsipy Sovetskogo Gosudar-
stvennogo Sotsial'nogo Strakhovaniia, (Moscow, 1951); A. Barit i B. Miliutin,
Osnovy Sotsia l'nogo Strakhovaniia (Moscow, 1934);Pototskii, V. M. Strakhovoe
Ustroistvo v SSSR, (1927); G. K. Iniutin, Chto daet trudiashchimsia novyi
pensionnyi zakon, (1956); Studenkin, Vlasov, Evtikhiev, Sovetskoe Admini-
strativnoe Pravo, (Moscow, 1950); V. V. Karavaev, Posobila po vremennoii
netrudosposobnosti (Moscow, 1950); A. A. Abramova, Okhrana Trudovykh
pray zhenschchin v SSSR (1954).
10. Information on early developments was found in Antipov, N., Finansovaia
practika professional'nykh soiuzov (Moscow, 1923), and V. A. Palepa, Kassy
vzaimopomoshchi, Sbornik mate rialov (Kharkov, 1935).
11. During November-December 1917, this Ministry was called Narkomat
Prizreniia; that is, the Ministry of Philanthropy. This designation, it was
felt,---was inappropriate to the concept of social welfare from a socialist point
of view. It was, therefore, renamed to Narkomat Sotsial'nogo Obespecheniia
early in 1918, a name retained to date. Obespechenie has been variously
translated by those writing in English as social assistance, social aid, social
security and social welfare. While none of these expresses exactly the meaning
of the Russian word, social welfare is used in this paper because it conveys
more correctly than the others the range of functions carried out by this
Commissariat in a frame of reference familiar to American social scientists.
For a few months in 1920 the Commissariat and the Ministry of Labor were
merged into a single Ministry, but this union was artificial and short-lived.
12. In addition to sources already cited, see Narkom Sotsialinogo Obespecheniia,
Sotsial'noe Obespechenie za Fiat' Let, April 30, 1918 - April 30, 1923
(Moscow, 1923).
13. Good sources include: U.S. Children's Bureau. Health and Welfare Services
for Mothers and Children in the USSR. From original Russian Sources, by
Anna Kalet Smith; United Nations, Study of Adoption of Children (1953), and
Problem Children and Juvenile Delinquents and their Care in the Children's
Institutions (after materials of the Moscow regional conference of Directors of
Children's Homes, December 15-19, 1933). Edited by 0. L. Bern and B. I.
Kufaef.
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-43- Footnotes to Madison
14. Mark Field, "Sovial Services for the Family in the Soviet Union", Marriage
and Family Living, August 1955, pp. 244-245.
15. Emphasis mine. Bol'shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopedia, Vol. 52, 1947, p. 299.
16. G. Ia. Shcherbinin, K voprosu ob organizatsii zemledel'cheskikh priiutov dlia
sel'skikh sirot (Petrograd, 1915).
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STAT
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L'
SOME NOTES ON THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER
by
Henry V. Dicks
This paper is a condensed restatement of some conclusions arrived at by
the writer on the strength of intensive interviews with Soviet defectors, published
1
in 1952, and revised in the light of later work by others and of reading some rele-
vant Russian authors of the period under review. Since there has to be some
pruning in a large theme, this paper is almost entirely about peasants. Bearers
of power in the Soviet Union are mostly the children of Great Russian peasants, or
the urban working-class, many of whom have retained close connection with their
peasant background.
It_is desirable first to summarize the general conceptual framework with
which we approached the interviews with Russian defectors in 1950. Some famili-
arity of the reader with psychoanalytic terms will be assumed.
(1) Personal data and literary products can be used by a skilled psychi-
.
atric observer and interviewer working with psychoanalytic concepts for making
inferences about deeper attitudes and motivations. For present purposes the
analyst has only to vary his focus from what is idiosyncratic for individuals to
what is recurrent in material from his sources.
(2).. By such means there can be defined a modal character which is shared
by representatives of a given national cultural group over and above sub-group
differences. It is this modal configuration of traits of behavior which is here
meant when speaking of "national character. "
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So far there are grounds for reasonable confidence in the accuracy of the
method. Some extrapolations will also be made from personality study into the
sphere of socio-political behavior, and these rest on more debatable conceptual
ground. - The writer is aware that the description of the functioning of a society
demands not only insight into the personalities of an adequate sample of members
of that society, but also needs to consider historical, economic, and similar
factors. To this extent this paper is only one strand in a canvas woven by several
disciplines. There is, however, one crucial aspect of social behavior where
personality psychology and social behavior seem inextricably bound together. This
is the area of attitude to authority.
(3) It is here assumed that the kind of experience a child has of authority
and of the exercise of power within his primary family group will be internalized
to form the basis of later expectations as to how the role of power-bearer and of
subordinate, of leader and of led, will be played in his wider social group., We
assume further that a given culture rests on an internalized and more or less un-
conscious system of mental images or models for the regulation and channelling
of needs and for signalling what is sanctioned and approved, or forbidden and
punished. The way authority roles are exercised within a society sharing such an
internalized unconscious system will be conditioned by the qualities of this system -
its rigidities and irrationalities based on the culture "myth" concerning human
nature. The main mental mechanisms involved in transferring the internal system
of members to the interpretation of their external world will be those of dis-
placement and substitution, and of projection and identification. It is precisely
this shared regulation of bio-psychological need systems and authority relations
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-3 -
which imparts to a culture its distinctive modal characteristics.
Though some of my earlier conclusions have changed while thinking about
the present statement, my main concepts do not seem controverted by any subse-
quent observations or reading. I have been gratified by the amount of support which
my idea's received from the Harvard University Project led by Clyde Kluckhohn
and his associates, and from the Columbia Studies under the leadership of Margaret
Mead, sponsored by RAND. To both of these I owe a great debt.
The procedure will be followed of describing first some of the more funda-
mental characteristics of Russian behavior and relating it to the primary family
group. This is the psychiatrist's proper sphere. Next will come some interpre-
tations about the motivations of wider social behavior by reference to primary
object relations. It is hoped that by stressing the nature of the primary processes
we may be able to form estimates as to the depth and degree of irrationality behind
some of the secondary social processes.
In 1952 my account of the modal Russian personality stressed ambivalence
as the outstanding trait. Ambivalence as such is a universal characteristic of
human b-eings. It is the manner in which this ambivalence is manifested which
provides a key to the interpretation of Russian character. It is seen to oscillate in
large swings of mood in relation to self, to primary love objects and to out-groups.
The quality of these swings is most readily understoOd in terms of oral need satis-
factions or deprivations. At one end, the "omnivorousness, " the lusty greed and
_
zest for life, the tendency to rush at things and "swallow them whole;" the need for
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quick and full gratification; the spells of manic omnipotence feeling and optimistic
belief in unlimited achievement; the overflowing vitality, spontaneity and anarchic
demand for abolition of all bounds and limitations to giving and receiving. At the
other end of the swing, there are melancholy, dreary apathy; frugality; meanness
and suspicion of universal hostility; anxious and sullen submissiveness; self-
depreciation and moral masochism, together with a grudging admission of the neces-
sity for a depriving and arbitrary authority, thought of as the only safeguard against
the excesses of Russian nature. In this mood we find a diffuse guilt feeling, a capa-
city for subtle empathy and a ruminative self-doubt and self-torment. Outward
servility and secret mulish obstinacy co-exist, as if one could bend the knee to
Caesar in outward conformity and yet inwardly remain wholly on the side of God be-
fore Whom all men are equally small and fallible. Indeed nothing is so persistent in
the Russian as a sense of moral outrage (izdevatellstvo) - that ubiquitous feeling of
guilt and shame at injustice and the sensitiveness about whom to trust not to hurt
one. The Russian can vary between feeling that he is no good and that he is
superior to all the rest of mankind. He can concede a man's social status and at
the same time be consumed with envy of superior wealth.
Whether in his Bacchanalian mood or in his depression, he always needs
direct spontaneous, heart-to-heart contact and communication, a sense of being
loved and belonging, and he respects that need in others. He loves the fun of team
work which goes with a swing and a song, and total investment of strength and
feeling. He understands commands and obedience. But he is distressed by distant
hauteur, formalism and bureaucratic protocol and hierarchy, preferring direct
informal leadership and spontaneous improvisation in tackling difficulties to
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methodical procedure. Elaborate hierarchy troubles him, as does any kind of
rigidly and uniformly controlled activity.
Perhaps a word should be added about what is connoted by "unconscious oral
fantasies" which appear to play such a large part in Russian character. It is at
primitive oral levels of human development (i. e., at the stage of the baby up to a
year or more in age) that objects can only partly be distinguished in terms of self
s
and not self, and ego is not yet clearly demarcated. The contrasts between "good"
and "bad" objects are extreme, according to whether they gratify or deprive. At
oral level also there is an almost total split between the attribution of loving and
destructive powers to the self and to external objects to whom this primitive dichotomy
is projected. This concept helps us to understand the deeply embedded feeling of
there being inscrutable, remote and uncontrollable powers who can do what they
like, which is part of the tacit assumption of Russian psychology and culture. To
this type of feeling we give the name "paranoid," because of its dominating the mind
in mental disorders of that category. This links with Margaret Mead's statement
that "friends could behave like enemies" and then reverse again. As examples of
the "break-in" of oral level fantasy the following must suffice:
Grandmothers threaten children that they must keep
their mouth shut because the devil who is ever lurking
near will get in through the mouth, or smash the
child's teeth and gain possession.
"Blood-sucker," "man-eater," hyaena, etc. are
standard epithets to call capitalist enemies as well
as Soviet oppressors.
Here the bad objects are all outside.
We also begin to understand the frequent appearance in Russian myth and
-
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self-appraisal of feelings of omnipotence, of a giant-like strength - even of infants -
_
against which strong measures of constraint and control have to be taken. As
Gorer and Rickman pointed out, 2Russian women swaddle their children because
they believe that left unconstrained the child, with his giant strength, will injure him-
self. The peasant Khor' is reported by Turgenev to have said about Peter the Great
that he was a typical Russian, "so confident in his strength and power that he is not
?????.t
averse to breaking himself. " Here, the dangerous powers are located inside. This
is the other side of paranoid feeling.
About the same time, and independently of our project, Margaret Mead
wrote:
In this traditional character, thought and action were so
interchangeable, that there was a tendency for all effort
to dissipate itself in talk or in symbolic behavior. While
there was a strong emphasis on the need for certain kinds
of control...this control was seen as imposed from with-
out; lacking it, the individual would revert to an original
impulsive and uncontrolled state. Those forms of be-
havior which involved self-control rather than endurance,
measurement rather than unstinted giving or taking, or
calculation rather than immediate response to a situation,
were extremely undeveloped. The distinctions between
the individual and the group and between the self and
others were also less emphasized than in the West, while
the organization of the mir, the large, extended families
and religious and social rituals stressed confession and
complete revelation of self to others and the merging of
the individual in the group....
Traditional Russian character assumed the co-existence
of both good and evil in all individuals, and, in attitudes
towards individuals, an expectation that friends could be-
have like enemies was combined with an expectation that
this behavior could also be reversed - by confession, re-
pentance and restoration of the former state.... Little
distinction was made between thought and deed, between
the desire to murder and the murder itself. All men were
held to be guilty, in some degree, of all human crimes.
Against .this lack of distinction between thought and deed
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there was a strong emphasis upon distinction among
persons, on a purely social basis, an intolerance of
any ambiguity between superiors and subordinates.
This rigidity in matters of deference and precedence,
however, was relieved by a strong countertendency
to establish complete equality among all human souls
and to wipe out all social distinctions. 3
Whilst this may be said to outline the Russian modal personality as it is re-
vealed in both literature and by our interviews, the behavioral characteristics here
described are in great contrast to the expected role behavior of the elite. Whilst
thinking primarily of the Communist Party Llite, it may also be said to have been
the role of pre-communist authorities since at least Peter I to educate and force
this modal character structure towards a higher level of mastery over primitive
impulses "to catch up with the West. " The Communist Revolution is sometimes
compared to Russia's passing through the Puritan phase of development. There are
grounds for making this comparison. The germs of puritan attitudes were discernible
in Russia despite all that was stated above. There was also a rather uncritical
swallowing" of scientific rationalism once it penetrated to the intelligentsia. The
"New Man" in Soviet psychology is he who overcomes his anarchic spontaneity in
favor of leader-like abstinence from immediate impulse-gratification; who sup-
presses sentiment and private feeling through systematic thought and planned
purposeful activity in whole-hearted pursuit of the party line. Virtue and charisma
are attached by the culture to those who show this mastery over impulse and greed
as against mere passive capacity to endure deprivation. Religious asceticism
existed in Russia for centuries, e.g. , among the "Old Believers." This contrast
between the modal mass character and the "puritan" prescription for Llite behavior
is one of the abiding tensions in Russian society, part of that sense of the alien and
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remote character of elites from masses which forms at once their claim to vener-
ation and their incurring of highly ambivalent resentment. Dudintsev, in Not by
Bread Alone, makes a cynical party bureaucrat, Drozdov, say this to his wife,
"Touch me where you like, you will always find a living, tender, sensitive spot.
That's why I need armour, like a snail...my strong will...not a bad thing for a
man...holds him in check..." etc.
This is the sacrifice of modal Russian character a man who climbs the party
ladder to success has to make. This, indeed, is what I called the oral-anal conflict
4
in the Rusian character.
II
It is in the context of these basic beliefs about the deeper nature of the child,
about what is hidden in mankind, that we should look at the relationships in the
primary peasant family, the traditional social and economic unit of rural Russia.
It is typically a patriarchal family of grandfather and grandmother with their sons
and their wives, and grandchildren, as well as any unmarried daughters and sons,
living incre-dibly close together, farming the holding by joint labour. At its head
the child perceives a composite authority figure, a blend of both the grandparents,
of which one is the almost wholly awe-inspiring and arbitrary father-figure, shouting
commands from his seat of power on the stove or at the head of table. The other
is an equally unpredictable, on the whole indulgent, but also nagging and dominant
mother-figure, who inculcates prayer and demonology. Both claim divine sanction
for their right to rule and chastise all their dependents, adults and children alike,
and they are also the prescribed objects of love and pious duty. (One cannot help
c.
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making the analogies: Tsar and Church; State and Party.)
The typical prevailing feeling of terrified reverence is best denoted by its
Russian word strakh. In the family setting its presence leads to the phenomenon
of marked duplicity in behavior. On the one hand an astonishing degree of priggish,
dutiful lip service and subjection to the grandfather; on the other hand, in his absence,
something not far short of conspiracy of the adult sons against their father. This
ambivalence is well described by Gladkov in the following words, speaking of his
father's relation during his childhood to the grandfather: "He nourished in himself
a constant resentment against grandfather.... He bore himself with contempt to-
wards grandfather in his absence, but to his face he expressed devotion and un-
conditional subordination. "5
Periodically there happen violent outbursts against the authority of the
grandfather by the grown-up sons in fits of sudden desperation, more often than
not terminated by remorseful and self-humiliating contrition (e.g. , prostration at
his feet) and begging for forgiveness. The motive ascribed to these revolts is the
wish for their freedom to leave home because the old man will not make over to
them their independent plot of land, their inheritance. But it is also moral outrage
and hurt- dignity due to his tyranny. It is no accident that parricide forms such a
prominent theme in Russian literature. 6 The image of the child's own adults is of
people subject to higher authority and filled with ambivalent resentment and sub-
missive love for the authority-figure. A little later he learns that even grandfather
is but a serf and can be bullied and humiliated by his barin (landowner, lord) or the
police. There is indeed a series of infinite regress, leading via grandfather to the
barin and so to the Tsar and to God.
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A correlate of this situation is the frequency with which the sons identify
themselves with grandfather's arbitrary power. Aggression passes down the
echelon of the family structure: the grandmother, herself under her husband's
heel, coerces and torments her daughters-in-law, the adult sons assert their status
and dignity by beating or bullying their wives, children or younger brothers. Lowest
in rank order is the daughter-in-law, as a "stranger." At all levels of this group,
obedience is exacted by beating, threats of expulsion from the homestead, and in-
vocation of terrible sanctions based on a near-medieval religious and demonological
system of beliefs, followed by contrition, tears and forgiveness.
In sum, then, the typical childhood of a Russian peasant, now in his prime,
was spent in a helpless state witnessing and living through scenes of his elders'
crude emotional oscillations between tenderness and brutality. He received an
ambivalent perception of his own father as strong and good as well as cowardly and
weak, his mother (grandparents' daughter-in-law) as lovable but despised, and
himself as powerless. A rich if chaotic inner world of emotional potentials is
created. The experience also compels the need to tolerate silently the most contra-
dictory and powerful emotions. The nature of the identifications made is highly
paradoxical. The little boy will tend to identify himself in part with the victim
position - with the tender, persecuted, suffering mother. There is evidence that
this theme is later elaborated into the hero fantasy of rescuing the oppressed,
7
suffering mother-figure. But it makes for a kind of despair about weak, tender
emotions which can never lead to happy endings. These are covered by a defensive
identification with the power and cruelty of the male line, by repression of the
"mother's boy" in favor of rugged, swaggering and "masculine" behavior. Girls
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will harbor much hostility towards men and rebellion against the marital role as
a fate not far worse than death. Love is always tragic in Russia.
The young child receives a lot of praise and love from-the babushka, from
aunts and neighboring women, and a special kind of intimate almost-forbidden love
from his own mother who scarcely dares show she is human. All these female
figures, except the tragic mother, convey a sense of support and shield the child
from the excess of paternal wrath. The child's emotional reward comes when he
feels he is considered strong, a good little helper, an eager student and above all
obedient and quiet.
Lastly there is also a strongly marked motive to escape from the tyranny
and oppression towards a distant beckoning land of freedom, equality and oppor-
tunity, where one can be one's own master and lead one's own life. This may have
its sources in the oedipal feelings about the mother. The tight control of the kin-
ship group by the patriarch, no less than the experience of swaddling in infancy,
may be more reasons for the need for "more space," "more elbow room," by
which the Russians are driven despite the size of their territory. Qualities which
may be expected to persist and are indeed seen to be modal, are a high degree of
strakh; a duplicity of behavior which combines a certain priggish eager-beaver
subordination with a capacity for impassive absorption of humiliation and indignity
together with a latent sensitiveness and vindictive revolt in quick sympathy with
under-dogs -against the authority that perpetrates these insults.
The economic situation of most peasants ensures that the Russian learnt
to live on very little. But this itself, together with the fitful indulgences by the
mother figures of childhood, may partly account for the undoubted longing for
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softness and tenderness and fat living as a basic leitmotif. Periods of joy and
happiness are when the child sees his elders in merry harmonious teamwork at
harvest time for the common purpose; and at festival times, when relaxed, feasting
and junketing together, all status forgotten, full of warmth and generosity. Some-
how, it is this nature-imposed rhythm and necessity which exacts the discipline,
not any principle or consistent handling by humans.
III
The March 1917 revolution was made by the heirs of the epoch just sketched,
against authorities essentially unchanged for centuries. It was a revolt against in-
tolerable conditions like all the desperate anarchic spontaneous mass rising, when
barins manors were set on fire. There followed a brief honeymoon a la Russe -
a spate of egalitarian sentiment and talking in town and village meetings, and of
possession of land taken from the murdered father-figures. The authorities whom
the Russians had thrown off had been weak and ineffective, men though remote in
status, yet too much like themselves: unorganized, lazy, greedy. Into the power
vacuum stepped Lenin and his coterie of exiles, with an appeal which was thoroughly
culture-congenial: a father speaking in angry peasant terms; promising bread and
land and revenge on oppressors, a severe order and a material plenty. It would
be interesting to attempt, however imperfectly, an analysis of the psychological
vicissitudes of authority relations in terms of the modal character, of their mutual
interaction, during the last eighty to ninety years.
During Turgenev's time the established order was a unity and could be
taken for granted by him and his characters. As a barin himself, he can naively
z
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describe his wonderment at the human qualities he discovers among his peasants:
how wise and shrewd the old men; how tender the muzhik in his friendship; how like
to the banns in his veneration of order. In brief, during the "Victorian" era there
is no difficulty in transposing our concepts from the family to the social scene, ex-
cept for that tiny top crust - the upper aristocracy, almost entirely alien to their
own lower orders. The peasants viewed the "infinite regress of authorities" to
which allusion was made, much as sons viewed fathers and grandfathers, with
strakh and duplicity, but understanding their authoritarian ferocities, and using the
same methods of propitiation and self-abasement towards them as they expected of
their own dependents towards themselves. These traits were so ingrained that
they persisted into the writer's own recollection of peasant behavior in the early
nineteen-hundreds. Serfdom seemed like a safe order, a knowing where one stood.
The barin, the-village mayor (starosta) and the county police were near to their
"children." - Their impact was personal and their izdevatel'stvo was often linked
with tenderness and paternalism. The bad object that deprived could be projected
into a blurred distant "They," but was also attributed to one's own sinfulness.
As serfdom is abolished there comes a loosening of the bonds of pious
tradition, felt by the older peasants as a dangerous loss of security. For what
happened to the barin begins to happen to the elder's own authority over his sons.
The predicament is touchingly presented by Gladkov. In a scene in which the eldest
son tells his father "times have changed" and he feels free to leave home where
there is no land, etc. the old man, in an effort to preserve his hold over his son,
bursts out:
?
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We are the servants of God. We are krest'ane
(peasants; krest = cross). From olden times we
bear the labor of the Cross; but never the slaves
of Anti-Christ and his angels, of priests or of
German (the Russian is nyemetskii, meaning
"foreigner" in general and German in particular)
authority, of heretics who smoke tobacco, of
shaven men with their tinsel and badges. You
young have no freedom nor sense but what comes
from the elders. In them alone is order and firm-
ness of life. 8
This quotation illumines the complex feelings of the peasant in the 18901s. There
is his own identification with due authority and fear of anarchy of the young. At
the same time there is total hostility to what are felt to be alien, bureaucratic,
new-fangled secular authorities and their stooges - the clergy. 9 Long-suffering
and hard fate are transfigured by the sanction of the Cross which gives the dignity
of moral principle both to humility and obstinacy.
After the reforms of 1862 secularization spread in Russia with early in-
dustrialization and social mobility. The almost mythical freedom and opportunity
of factory work lures the emancipated landless sons to the cities. They take with
them their ambivalent expectations of oppression and of boundless hope. They find
nothing reassuring in labor conditions which exploit and deprive, without the corn-
pensation of paternal affection. Gorki was the finest painter of these conditions.
Crafty townsmen and the kulak multiply in the countryside and batten on the average
peasant no less than on his barin. They are hated as "man-eaters" and "fat men. "
We read of religious resignation as recently as in Gladkov as a valued form of
defense against mounting despair and envious resentment. Peasant-saints,
ambivalently preaching love and self-surrender, but also calling for repentance
of the oppressors, seem ubiquitous and revered by the population just like the holy
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men of India.
Another attitude is so typical that it requires mention. Gladkov describes
the scene of arrival of the police inspector in his native village for the supervision
of rent and debt collection. When his carriage appears the whole population be-
rates its children, pushes the wives around and flogs its horses - even the chickens
scatter. This behavior means: "look, we are calling our dependents to order to
show due reverence. " But it also means - "scatter, for the Anti-Christ is riding
among us." "We, the heads of families, show strakh, but how can we control all
this undisciplined rabble." In miniature, here is the quintessence of modal Russian
authority feelings. Hate of the plicemen come to support and protect the exploiters -
the barin and his bailiff. Eagerness to show their siding with authority by dis-
placing the resentment down to "stupid, unruly women and children, " whom they
make toe the line and punish. Scenes with similar meaning were reported to us
by the defectors we interviewed. The police or the mayor could not be seen instru-
mentally - only as total enemies.
Cloiely related is the culturally prevalent mechanism of self-undoing.
Caught in hopeless impotent hate against the all-powerful creditor or oppressor,
hate turns against the self and its good objects. This well-documented behavior
pattern of Russian life, widespread in all classes, usually takes the form of
depressive apathy, neglect or desertion of work and of the family, wife-and-child
beating, bouts of desperate, reckless drinking. Both observer and subject usually
have insight that this is symbolic blame of the authorities. In our more recent
interview material we had plenty of examples of this "throwing up the sponge, "
or "making of one's own ruin a stick to beat the authorities with." It is like
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Dosto-evsky's Raskolnikov who makes a total, mad protest by murder, equivalent
to suicide, accusing and expiating at one and the same time the guilt of the bad
dominating persecutor with whom he also feels at one.
Scenes like those reported during the collectivization of farms under Stalin,
when peasants destroyed crops and livestock rather than hand it over knowing they
would be shot or deported, occurred in plenty during pre-revolutionary days at
impoundings of property for debt. Behavior under M. V. D. interrogation as de-
scribed by our interviewees, followed the same pattern: "Do what you like - I am
through."
The new masters of Russia with Lenin at their head have given convincing
evidence of both their Russian-ness and their hate of Russian-ness. Psychologi-
cally we may think of them as a conspiratorial band of determined parricides who
were able to catalyse the release of endless paranoid hate of Russians for the bad
inner authority figure; to sanction cathartic revenge, and so to free also the lusty,
constructive omnipotence feelings. But how to ride this storm of anarchic, un-
systematic hate as well as energy? Their Russian-ness was demonstrated by
their wholesale, uncompromising acceptance of Western patterns of socialism, by
their paranoid lack of discrimination of finer shades between black and white, by
their belief that nothing was impossible, by their magical faith in the entirely
"scientific," rational nature of their "system," supplanting the sense of mission
of orthodox Russian Christianity, ever watchful of the least error which would
enable "the devil to get in. " It was thus consonant with the deepest fantasies that
before long they reestablished the persistent authority modal inherent in the Russian
mind: an absolute power which is the whole repository of truth and which cannot
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be questioned or deviated from. This "restoration" was well on by 1928 and corn-
. -
pleted during the purges and the re-introduction of officer-status with Tsarist-style
accoutrements and rank-badges during World War II. Peoples' Commissars be-
came ministers. It is true they called you "Comrade" still, as a relic of the days
of equality, and that some Bolsheviks were friendly fatherly persons who pitied you.
The new elite bases its goal values on the doctrine of the Will - the doctrine that
man can master his own nature as well as the environment. This is culture-
congenial where it stresses maximum effort, achievement and beating the foreigners.
It is resented when it means the exercise of authority in that impersonal, implacable
nyemetski alien way which has been the most hated feature of Communist rule.
Not only was increasing instrumentalism and decreasing expressiveness bound to
come because of the growing complexity of industrialization and bureaucratization.
It came also because of the internal conflict of the rapidly promoted men who im-
plemented the plan. Though they came, except in the earliest days, chiefly from
the people, these men had, ex hypothesi, made the closest identifications with the
Western-thinking Lenin group, with the proclaimed goals of mastering the backward
moujik and turning him into a disciplined communist paragon. This really has
meant incessant war by the party against the Russian modal character in them-
selves and-in the "masses."
For-Bolshevik fantasies, greed, hate and apathy were a threat to the efforts
to build, love and control. This damned anarchic human material was the only
obstacle to a wonderful scheme. Hence, people must not be allowed to have doubts,
guilt, ambivalence. The mechanisms of displacement and projection which are by
nature designed to buffer the personality against excessive guilt feeling, are
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massively mobilized at all levels in the party elite, to a degree which constitutes a
qualitative change from pre-revolutionary patterns.
The compulsive, inhuman tempo to industrialize and build up an invulnerable
military-technological empire is due, I suspect, to this paranoid dynamic. Sadistic
dominance needs are projected to foreign out-groups, creating an "encirclement"
situation and,.a siege mentality. This externalizes the "enemy" and deflects hate
with its attendant guilt from the in-group authority to the "blood-sucking" imperi-
alists, symbols of themselves, enacting the role of everyone's oppressive father-
image. Internal deviation can also be projected in this way as the work of "agents"
-
of the external enemy. Leites, in a notably subtle analysis of Bolshevik mentality,
has shown the fantasy-thought process by which the inner split of "total submission -
total hostility" can create this recurring public myth of the party leader turned
enemy. 10The succession of these figures can then be "unmasked" as scape-goats
drawing upon themselves the wrath and execration of the group and thus purging
collective guilt feelings in the people for having felt traitorous towards the govern-
ment as a whole. This is still to some extent in line with modal behavior: it
demonstrates the power of supreme authority, the all-seeing eye, to level even
the strong. It increases strakh with its bracing and reassuring aspects. What is
uncertain is the degree to which the rulers consciously use such mechanisms, and
to what extent they are impelled by unconscious forces to rely on such myths and
ritual expiations. We now know that the Nazi top leadership were as much the
victims as the cold-blooded exploiters of their own psychotic fantasies.
This behavior makes most sense when we interpret it as the secondary
elaboration of that early oral conflict in the Russian, that war in the mind against
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the bogey of anarchic strength and destructive power which has to be counteracted
,
by all the forces available to a primitive ego. Another, more readily understandable
mechanism of defense against typical conflicts is that of manic denial, observed
also in tense managerial personalities of the West. This is akin to the compulsive
drive, seeking escape from doubt and guilt feelings by restless achievement and
organizing-activity. Here we find motivations for coercing the "backward masses"
(symbols of the subject's "id") to higher tempo and norms; for the need of more and
more technical mastery over nature and machines in an effort to convince oneself
that "everything is?under control. " The practice as well as the terminology of
Bolshevism are replete with this pseudo-objective technological scientism. The
all-pervading secret police are, for example, dignified by the term "apparatus."
The effect of this war by paranoid pseudo-rationality against the depressive
side of the Russian character is clearly discernible. We do not know how deep this
effect is, for the Russian is adept at lip-service conformity and dissimulation. We
know something of the attitudes of men who deserted during and after World War
II - most of them peasants or "rural intelligentsia" in the case of my own sample,
and under thirty-five. They felt ethically betrayed by the falsity of their masters'
descriptions of Western conditions. They also had put into practice what the dis-
possessed-sons had always done - to walk away when possible as a gesture of de--
fiance. The chief recurring reason given was the revolt against izdevatellstvo of
the party _against the people - their poor hungry mothers symbolizing their
motherland and people. These men - and they could not all have been atypical
felt morally insulted because after a war in which they had saved the Union they
were again mistrusted, coerced and terrified into total compliance. Theirs was
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the groan of Russians through the ages. That part of them which sought love and
nurturance from "their own government" felt enraged - not with what had been done
but by the manner.
The chief changes were: (1) the regression in thinking and feeling towards
the least mature and most psychotic layer of Russian fantasy: from the humane,
broad tolerance of good and evil towards an acceptance of "black and white"
mythology - a need to betray and become a turncoat, to deny friends and one's real
feelings; (2) impoverishment of free communication, and suspicion of one's
neighbor, as a possible informer; (3) limitation of privacy and security from terror;
and (4) the failure to increase consumer goods and amenities of life.
Defectors still younger showed a significantly greater acceptance than the
older ones of "Soviet reality, " and their defection was motivated less by principle
11
than by their chance exposure to the West and by material dissatisfactions. They
seemed to demand more from their regime. For a time after Stalin's death
Khrushchev not only permitted execration of the arch-tyrant as the supreme scape-
goat, but himself wept before his comrades at Stalin's izdevatel'stvo, including
being forced to dance the gopak. 12He thus not only expressed his identification
with the insulted and oppressed, but on this and other occasions staked his claim
as heir to idealized little Father Lenin, and his own need to deny guilt. Since then,
as we know, he has shown more tyrannical features, tempered with some of the
gruff, jovial "oral" behavior he typifies. His standing in the popular mind appears
not to have improved thereby: it is reported that he is "not respected because he
is too close to the people. " This panebratstvo (hail-fellow-well-met) is not the
modern Soviet-conditioned people's idea of a top leader. Now, as ever, the
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Russians value sincerity and real warmth, but are quick at spotting phoney cordi-
ality in a calculating confidence-trickster. It remains to be seen which he is.
In trying to strike a balance between gains and losses, we have to try and
look at the phenomena open for observation from the Russian point of view.
The Communist leaders have known how to use to breaking point, but always
short of it, that contradiction in Russians which wants omnipotently to possess and
achieve everything preferably by spurts of group effort, but also counts abstinence
and postponement of gratification a virtue. Within limits, they have given immense
opportunities for able people to traverse the whole gamut of social mobility and
economic success. They have created a literate population whose education has
made them aware not only of their own history but of the fun of machine-mindedness,
into which so much of dominance need has been channelled. They have used
xenophobia and envy of the rich neighbor to divert hate from themselves to the
West, weaving healthy Russian love of country into this parricidal and near-
demonological theme.
The leadership has also played the role of Power according to the modal
stereotype. Utter devotion is really not expected - i.e. , there is reliance on
external sanctions and controls. This leads one to ask: can a society be said to
be maturing if it continues to treat all its citizens as potential traitors and saboteurs,
not fit to have mental freedom? This deep "fault" in Russian unconscious imagery
moreover has fostered the rise to power mainly of the most sado-masochistic,
authority-id-entified and insecure among the citizens, who have for lack of other
inner models aped the hate-invested rigid, status-conscious bureaucrats and
generals remembered from Tsarist days. These soulless Party hacks have made
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a hollow mockery of the longing for spiritual freedom, justice and equality. Per-
haps they have killed the revolution. We have seen that the young generation, es-
pecially in the cities, have accepted the cruelty and unprincipledness of this
production-machine. With them lies the future. Will they, who know no other
system and expect bigger and better careers and rewards from it, be content with
this hedging about of their freedom, especially in the sphere of contact with the
West, of criticism and discussion of men and policies and priorities?
There has been great concretization of thought and action as the result of
technical education. Can the strengthening of reality thinking for long be kept out
of the political sphere which is still dominated by fantasies and myths? We do not
know what millions of fathers and mothers and babushkas are transmitting to their
children. My guess is that it is not very different from Gorki's or Gladkov's
nursery experience. A young simple cowherd from Vyatka oblast' said this to me:
"In the U.S.S.R. May 1st and November 7th are great feast days. But we in our
village have a holiday called Easter...have you heard of it?"
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FOOTNOTES TO DICKS
1. H. V. Dicks, "Observations on Contemporary Russian Behaviour", Human
Relations, V (1952), 111-176.
2, G. Gorer, and J. Rickman, The People of Great Russia (London, -1949).
3, M. Mead, Soviet Attitudes towards Authority (New York, 1951).
4. H. V. Dicks, loc. cit.
5. F. Gladkov, Povest' o detstve (Moscow, 1949).
6. e.g. The Brothers Karamazov, and Bunin.'s "Gervasii", in Rasskazy (Moscow,
1955).
7. e.g. the fairy tale of the prince who delivers the maiden from the evil sorcerer,
Koshchei "The Immortal" (cf. "Firebird"). Such motivations are also one
source of fervent love of the mother-country.
8. Gladkov, op. cit.
_
9. Gladkov, published in 1949, might have been satirizing the incursion of the
Communists into the life of the village. Equally, that plea could have belonged
to the era of Peter the Great.
10. N. Leites, and E. Bernaut, Ritual of Liquidation (Glencoe, Ill., 1954).
11. R. A. Bauer, A. Inkeles, and C. Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works
(Cambridge, Mass., 1956).
12. See the story of the peasant Ovsyanikov whose barin made him do just this as
part of his sense of possession of the serf, and then praised the humiliated
man; in I. S. Turgenev, Zapiski Okhotnika (St. Petersburg, 1883).
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STAT
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THE SOVIET MODEL OF THE IDEAL YOUTH
by
Ralph T. Fisher, Jr.
This paper will examine the question of continuity and change in the
Soviet model of the ideal youth. "Youth" is understood here in the Soviet sense
of those between the ages of fifteen and the middle or late twenties, coinciding
roughly with the age group of the Communist League of Youth, or Komsomol.
The "Soviet model" referred to is the model that has been constructed by the top-
most Soviet leaders in their public expressions and actions. This abstraction
combines the ideal images appropriate to the countless social roles demanded of
Soviet young people. It is a model that is important because it has been propagated
by the immense educational and coercive resources of the Soviet state.
This model bears no necessary similarity to those that have actuated the
leaders in their own lives. Nor is it the only model that has influenced Soviet
youth. In American society the top political leaders are not always the main
setters of standards of behavior. And even though the Soviet Union has under-
gone a social- revolution and a generation of totalitarian dictatorship, some such
difference still persists there. Certainly there are widely differing models of
youth in operation for many of the sub-cultures within the conglomerate of Soviet
1
society. The coexistence of other models must be kept in mind as we study the
most conspicuous one.
There have obviously been changes, through forty years of the Soviet
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regime, in what might be called the external appearance and functions of the Soviet
model of the ideal youth. Some of these changes reflect shifts in the composition
of the Soviet population. For example, the composite model of today is better
educated and less "proletarian" than its counterpart in the early post-revoltutionary
years. 2Other changes reflect the major stages in the development of the Soviet
regime. Whereas the model of the Civil War years had a military cast, the model
of the NEP was waging mainly ideological battles, and each succeeding period left
its distinctive imprint. Within each area of Soviet life the detailed functions as-
sociated with the model have changed. If in the rural realm the ideal youth of
1918-1920 was confiscating grain and recruiting soldiers, under the early Five
Year Plans he was collectivizing the farms and wiping out the "kulaks. " If in the
educational realm the ideal youth of the early twenties sneered at conventional
schools and tried to combine education with factory work, the ideal youth of the
forties was actively reinforcing discipline under the command of the authorities
within the regular school system. But a survey of those kinds of changes in the
multiple roles of youth in each area of Soviet life would involve the whole history
3
of Soviet youth since 1917, and cannot be undertaken here.
II
Granting that there were those changes in the shell of the model, we must
focus dur---attention on the central core of traits demanded. We want to see what
kind of personal character the regime has been trying to produce in its youth, and
whether the kind of character has changed significantly in the course of the past
forty years. To learn this we may first examine the model that characterized the
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a
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full bloom of postwar Stalinism, after the "abnormal" eras of the Great Purge
and World War II, and then proceed to determine how far this model differed from
that of the early years of the Soviet regime and that of the post-Stalinist era.
The essential features of the ideal youth of postwar Stalinism emerge
from the authoritative proceedings of the Komsomol Congress of 1949, published
at length in the Soviet press for the guidance of those who were training Soviet
youth. For example, the letter sent to the Komsomol Congress from the Central
Committee of the Communist Party declared that
The Komsomol must bring up, among our youth,
fighters who are fearless, cheerful, buoyant, con-
fident in their strength, ready to overcome any diffi-
culties--fighters for the freedom and honor of our
Homeland, for the cause of the Party of Lenin and
Stalin, for the victory of Communism. 4
This passage was often repeated during the Congress, and was incorporated with
5
little change into the revised Regulations of the Komsomol. Another typical
characterization appeared in the letter sent by the Komsomol Congress to Stalin:
We vow to you, dear Comrade Stalin, warmly to love
our socialist Homeland, mortally to hate her enemies,
not to know fear in the struggle, patiently to endure
hardships and misfortunes, to display determination
_ and persistence in reaching the goal that has been set.
The young generation of our country is ready to carry
out all your instructions, and all the instructions of
the Communist Party and the Soviet Government. We
promise you always to be watchful, ready to deliver a
crushing rebuff to the imperialist aggressors, ready
to give all our strength and, if necessary, our lives
in the defense of our socialist Fatherland.
You teach Soviet youth perseveringly to master
knowledge, culture, science, and technology.
-We vow to you, Comrade Stalin, to carry out with
honor these instructions of yours....
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...Love of you and loyalty to the Fatherland is
the life and the spirit of the youth of our country!6
From those statements and many others like them, one could draw up a list of
traits sought in youth--patriotism, loyalty, courage, vigilance, honesty, per-
sistence, industriousness, optimism, initiative, cheerfulness, idealism, obedi-
ence, militancy, ideological purity, and many others.
The central theme that gave those traits their meaning was that of abso-
lute devotion, respect, and subservience to the leadership represented in the
trinity--Stalin, party, and government. 7 Although the worship of Stalin was then
near the peak of its extravagance, even the gaudiest panegyric8 illustrated that
the cult was of Stalin as the leader of the party and, hence, of the people and their
government. So that when the ideal youth was told to regard Stalin as the incar-
nation of everything good, the all-knowing, the all-seeing, the all-powerful, the
recipient of vows, and the source of inspiration and strength, these demands only
reinforced the demand for loyalty, respect, and obedience to the party leadership. 9
Komsomol orders were an extension of party orders for the young. The Komsomol
Regulations declared that "The strictest observance of Komsomol discipline is
the first obligation of all members of the Komsomol... , " and went on to say that
each member "must faultlessly carry out the decisions of party, Soviet, and
Komsomol bodies. "10 Not only the references to discipline11 and to unity and
12
solidarity, but the whole conduct of the Congress, including the nature of the
discussion and the always miraculously unanimous votes, made it clear that the
party leadership was exercising very tight control, and that eager acceptance of
this "guidance"13 was a distinguishing feature of the ideal youth.
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It
was in that context alone that all the other traits demanded in the ideal
youth could be interpreted. Words like patriotism, courage, daring, heroism,
inexhaugtible will to victory, self-sacrifice--these were applicable only to those
who fought for the party's cause. 14"Vigilance" concerned the security of the
party and the Soviet state; "honesty"--the observance of principles laid down by
the leader-ship. 15Persistence, industriousness, all-out effort, the constant
striving for perfectionist goals, the refusal to he satisfied with what one has at-
tained--such qualities were of course related to the "building of Communism,"
16
that is, the tasks enunciated by the party leaders.
life was inseparable from political life. 17
Virtuous conduct in personal
"Initiative" must follow strictly the
commands of the party. 18The cheerfulness that was part of the ideal did not
preclude some satisfaction with the present, but was essentially based upon opti-
mism19
regarding the promised future. One might conceivably argue that it was
that future?the long-range goal, Communism--to which the ideal youth was sub-
ordinating himself, rather than to the leadership of the party. When, however,
one takes into account the persistent vagueness of all descriptions of that ultimate
goal, 20as well as the leaders' assumption that only they knew how to reach it,
then one is bound to conclude that while references to the goal were used to justify
the immediate demands of the leadership, those demands themselves were the
essential: guideposts for the ideal youth.
The Soviet model of the ideal youth in 1949 was, in short, the "eager
robot"--inwardly so complete a tool of the party leadership as to be devoid of a
genuine self, yet outwardly seeming to possess such human attributes as will and
judgment'and enthusiasm.
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III
With that image of the ideal youth of postwar Stalinism in mind, we now
jump back to the early Soviet period when Stalin had not yet added his impress to
the mold. Although there was in those days very little glorification of any leader,
21
including even Lenin, subservience could nevertheless be demanded. How sub-
servient was the ideal youth?
When the Komsomol, which ostensibly embraced "the best" young people,
held its first Congress, in October, 1918, the assembled delegates agreed virtu-
ally unanimously that while the League was to be "solidary" with the Bolshevik
Party, it was at the same time to be "independent. "22 It was to safeguard "the
principle of the spontaneous activity of youth. "23 In April, 1919, however, a
plenary session of the Komsomol's Central Committee "requested" that the
Komsomol be brought more closely under the party's direction, 24and soon
(August, 1919) the two Central Committees jointly declared that the Komsomol
25
must be "directly subordinate" to the party from top to bottom. While the words
autonomous!' and "self-standing" continued to be applied to the Komsomol, and
while party spokesmen continued to call for "spontaneous activity" on the part of
youth, the word "independent" dropped out of use, and by 1920 was already stig-
matized as typical of the dangerous "counter-revolution of the Left. "26
The "direct subordination" of the League to the party was evident in deed
as well as in word. Some of those whom the First and Second Congresses elected
to the League's Central Committee were unceremoniously removed from their
posts by the party. 27 Already by 1920 the top officials of the League, although
ostensibly still elected by the Komsomol Congress, were in fact designated by a
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28
Communist fraction" operating behind the scenes and subject to party orders.
Pronounced tendencies toward authoritarian rule from the side of the party were
evident in the conditions of deliberation and criticism in the early Komsomol
Congresses, in the admission and expulsion of members, and in the organizational
structure. 29When some especially zealous Komsomolites launched satellite
groups designed to influence and guide the broad masses of Soviet youth, the party
?
stopped-them, evidently fearing to let Komsomolites gain too much influence over
auxiliary youth groups until the Komsomol itself was more firmly under party
domination. 30
In that early institutional setting the personal quality most insistently de-
manded in youth was discipline. This discipline was to spring from acknowledg-
ment of the Communist goal, and was to be conscious, self-willed, and self-
enforced-, rather than imposed from without in an "authoritarian spirit. "31
Thus
it was theoretically not in conflict with the parallel demands for initiative and
spontaneity. But it must produce unity and solidarity--in Lenin's words, ;la
32
single will" for all the millions of workers and peasants. It must be manifested
33
in strict obedience to higher authority. Said Shatskin at the Komsomol Congress
of 1920:
There are some comrades among us who say that
there is one discipline in the party and another in
the League. They say that since our organization
is an educational one, we can somewhat loosen the
reins with which the leading bodies must hold their
subordinate Komsomol organizations in check.
This opinion must be refuted root and branch... ,
We must finally establish the most unconditional
unquestioning subordination of all active workers
to the leading bodies of our organization, and the
personal responsibility of each responsible official
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for each member of our League, for that work
which these members are performing. 34
The same Congress, in closing, issued to all members "an appeal for the greatest
self-control and discipline." After describing the perils they faced, it proclaimed
that
In such conditions, there stands before the whole
proletariat and also before proletarian youth first
of all the task of preserving, developing and
strengthening iron discipline in the ranks of their
organizations! Only with such discipline, consoli-
dating the proletariat into an impregnable granite
rock, can it resist the crowd of enemies and the
loose petty-bourgeois element.
The Third Congress appeals for the preservation of
such iron discipline in our ranks. May the ranks of
our League be invincible battalions of young prole-
tarians storming the old world.
Long live our militant front!
Long live the victorious proletariat!
Long live revolutionary proletarian discipline!
35
Other traits much in demand included self-sacrificing bravery for the
37
Communist cause,-36 alertness and vigilance against hostile forces, confidence
in the victory of Communism, 38
a sense of responsibility, and such qualities as
39
toughness, dexterity, precision, and industriousness. Those and other demands--
to learn Marxism, to set an example, and to avoid dogmatism and pride40--were
expressed in harmony with the overriding insistence on conscious discipline and
strict obedience. The Soviet model of the ideal youth in 1918-1920 was above all
a good follower.
Thus the models of 1949 and 1918-1920 appear highly similar. While the
early Soviet ideal probably possessed slightly more "self-standingness" than the
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Stalinist version, the characteristics of the eager robot were already predominant. 41
IV
One Might protest, quite logically, that the conditions of the Civil War
would have produced the eager-robot ideal, no matter what had been the Communists'
original intent. It is therefore pertinent to examine briefly the pre-revolutionary
Bolshevik model of the ideal youth, as revealed in the writings of the chief prophet
of Bolshevism.
Lenin left no finished portrait of his ideal Bolshevik, young or old, even
though his program called for remaking man and society. But as a revolutionary
leader he demanded and appreciated certain traits in his followers. He especially
prized worker and student youth for their turbulence, daring, and revolutionary
potentialities, 42 and considered young people suited to play the semi-sacrificial
role of a vanguard or skirmishing force which could be sent into battle without
committing the main body of the party. 43 Apart from such notions, however,
Lenin's image of the ideal youth was roughly equivalent to his image of the ideal
Bolshevik,_ for he considered his party to be the party of youth:44
Lenin conveniently divorced his model from customary ethical standards
by labeling those standards either "feudal" or "bourgeois, "45 and by asserting
that the "proletariat"--whose will be considered himself uniquely fitted to interpret
46
--would establish the moral code of the future. Proletarian ethics admitted all
methods. Lenin declared that "Social Democracy does not tie its hands; ... it
recognizes all means of struggle, so long as they are suited to the available forces
of the party and afford the possibility of gaining the greatest results attainable under
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the given circumstances. 47
Lenin insisted that his followers exhibit "partyness, " by which he meant
allegiance to his Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers'
Party, and observance of party discipline. 48 In his view a truly non-partisan ap-
proach was impossible. 49 When some of his disciples intimated that partyness
was a negation of freedom within their own group, Lenin said partyness constituted
"freedom from bourgeois-anarchist individualism." The principle of freedom of
organization, he declared, gave the party the right to exclude those who insisted
on being individualistic. 50 Lenin was not above declaring that support of his own
tactics was a criterion of partyness. 51 But when he was accused of using party-
ness as a mere cloak for his own political demands, he argued that his policy was
that of "the majority of class-conscious Marxist workers participating in political
life"52--whose views he naturally expressed.
say:
He did not always sound completely authoritarian. For example, he could
?
Precisely in order not to become too outspoken and
...harsh regarding 'anarchistic individualism' we
must, in our opinion, do everything possible--even
to the point of some retreats from the pretty diagrams
of centralism and from an unconditional submission
to discipline--in order to grant these little groups
freedom to express themselves, in order to give the
whole party the possibility of weighing the profundity
or insignificance of disagreements, and to determine
just where, in what, and on just whose side there is
inconsistency.... We must have more faith in the
independent judgment of all the masses of party
workers. They, and only they, can soften the ex-
cessive vehemence of schismatically-inclined
groupings; can, with their gradual, imperceptible,
but all the more persistent influence, inspire these
groups with 'good will' toward the observance of party
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discipline; can cool the ardor of anarchistic indi-
vidualism.... 53
But this semi-tolerance toward "little groups" within the party was exhibited late
in 1903, after the party had split and Lenin had lost his fight to control the party
organ, Iskra. In other words, it was at a moment when he had reason to fear that
he and his followers might for a time be one of those "little groups"--that is, until
54
they could fight back to a position of power.
_
Lenin's view of personal relationships fitted within the framework of party-
ness and centralism. He condemned clanish or cliquish relations--which included
personal loyalties to individuals other than himself--on the ground that they ob-
structed party discipline. Comradeliness had for him a special meaning. "We
acknowledge the duty of comradeship, the duty of supporting all comrades, the
duty of tolerating the opinions of comrades," said Lenin. "But," he went on,
"for us the duty of comradeship stems from the duty to Russian and to international
Social Democracy, and not vice versa." Comrades were comrades, he said, "only
because and insofar as they toil in the ranks of Russian (and, consequently, also
57
international) Social Democracy. "56 While Lenin appealed for initiative, this
merely complemented his demand for discipline: A reminder on "discipline" could
be used to bring into line comrades who did something wrong, while a request for
more "initiative" could stimulate those who were merely not doing enough of what
was right.
Plainly underlying Lenin's concept of the ideal Bolshevik was his pre-
occupation with fight and struggle. For him there was no possibility of a peaceful
compromise. "The question," he said, "can be posed only this way: bourgeois
_
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or socialist ideology. There is no middle ground...." "Therefore, " he went on--
in a phrase that has since become a Communist slogan--"any belittling of socialist
ideology, any deviation from it means the same thing as a strengthening of bourgeois
ideology. "58
This by no means exhaustive survey of Lenin's pre-revolutionary desiderata
suggests strongly that the eager-robot ideal of 1949 and 1918-1920 was already well
developed early in the twentieth century.
V
The ideal did not die with Stalin. In 1954, at the first Komsomol Congress
after Stalin's death, the leadership called for a revival of "criticism from below, "
observance of the collective principle in leadership, and wider democracy within
59
the League. But the Congress itself, in its discussion, criticism, and voting,
gave no hint of genuine relaxation. 60Soviet literature was still said to be failing
61
to depict lifelike heroes who could serve as models for the young. Although the
Stalin cult was gone, the cult of the party and its Central Committee provided ample
occasion for the same extravagent expressions of devotion. In their letter to the
party's Central Committee, the delegates said that
The young men and women of the land of the Soviets
- have boundless love and loyalty for the Communist
Party. Their most cherished thoughts and hopes are
bound up with the party; they are obligated to it for
all the happiness and joy of their lives.... In all its
activities the Leninist Komsomol senses the daily,
fatherly care of the Communist Party and its Central
Committee....
The Communist Party is the wise teacher and mentor
of youth. For the Komsomol, the word and deed of
the party come before all else.... 62
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And when that letter was read at the final session, all delegates reportedly rose
"in a united transport of boundless love for their own Communist Party" and gave
a "tumultuous ovation," shouting "Glory to the Communist Party!"63
Since 1954 there has been no clear sign of change. The Komsomol Central
Committee in February, 1957, while calling for more democracy in the League,
insisted also, in the very same sentence, on the need for stronger discipline, and
the attitude toward the party leadership was just as subservient as ever. 64 In July,
when Khrushchev's victory over Malenkov, Kaganovich, and Molotov was announced,
the accompanying editorial--studded with references to "monolithic unity,"
"discipline," and obedience to party directives--was in the Stalinist tradition. 65
VI
The Soviet model of the ideal youth?the model expressed by the party
leadership--has, then, had an almost unvarying core. Changes have occurred in
the external appearance and functions of the model, but these have not significantly
affected_ the continuity of the eager-robot ideal--the ideal of utter loyalty to the
party chiefs, iron discipline, self-sacrificing bravery, incessant vigilance, burning
enthusiasm, unshakable conviction, and uncompromising militancy. While many
of those qualities suggest a military figure, the ideal youth, unlike a soldier, is
never off duty. There are no areas of human knowledge, appreciation, or action
in which-he can exercise full freedom and imagination.
The persistence of the eager-robot ideal reflects the continuing importance
of doctrine for the Soviet regime, the regime's reliance upon an atmosphere of
crisis, and the regime's totalitarian and authoritarian character. The official
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S.
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ideal as treated here could not change significantly without considerable changes
in the nature of the regime.
But that answer to the question of continuity and change in the Soviet model
of the ideal youth must be termed incomplete. We are driven back to the difficulties
suggested earlier, which stem in large part from our lack of free access to Soviet
society. We lack the means of penetrating very far beyond the formal or official
or external model, but we can besure that it does not monopolize the scene. To
the extent that it appears too harsh and uncompromising, to the extent that it fails
to live for Soviet citizens, it encourages other models to flourish. The Soviet
system, never completely authoritarian or totalitarian despite its aims and its
dictatorial excesses, can inspire models of careerism, of apathy, of compromise,
of revolt. The cynicism of the leaders vitiates the official model, while beyond
the circle of political chiefs there are other model-makers who play significant
but not easily appraisable roles in establishing operating images of the ideal.
Thus there is the possibility that, while "the Soviet model" remained the same,
other Models, without being formal or official, could nevertheless alter significantly
the orientation of Soviet youth.
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FOOTNOTES TO FISHER
1. Some suggestions of this?though far too few to afford a basis for very system-
atic-analysis?may be seen in a book planned by the author and now being
edited by him and P. Kruzhin, under the auspices of the Institute for the Study
of the USSR, in Munich. It will appear soon, probably under the title "The
Komsomol Through the Eyes of Former Members."
2. For relevant statistics from the Co.ngresses of the Komsomol, see S"ezd. IV,
pp. 325-331; S"ezd VI, pp. 299-302; S"ezd VII, pp. 489-491; S"ezd VIII, pp.
546-547; S"ezd. IX, pp. 405-406;_ S"ezd X, Vol. II, pp. 399-404; Komsomol'
skaia pravda (hereafter abbreviated KP), Apr. 1, 1949, p. 2; Mar. 23, 1954,
p. Z. (Note that in 1949 and 1954 the proportion of "workers" was no longer
given at all.) The abbreviation S"ezd followed by a Roman numeral will be
used here to designate the stenographic report, in book form, of one of the
first ten Komsomol Congresses (held in 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924,
1926, 1928, 1931, and 1936). The exact title, usually quite lengthy, differs
for each Congress, but they are catalogued together under the group author,
Vsesoiuzny' leninskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhi (or, for the early
ones, simply Rossiiskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhi) and the word
S"ezd.. All were published in Moscow--the first nine by Molodaia gvardiia,
the tenth by Partizdat. The dates of editions used here are as follows:
I (3d ed. )-1926; II (3d ed. )-1926; III-1926; IV-1925; V-1927; VI-1924;
VII-1926; VIII-1928; IX-1931; X (2 vols. )--1936.
3. For further details on the specific functions demanded of young people at
various periods see my forthcoming book on the Soviet pattern for youth from
191_8-_to 1954, to be published in the Series of the Russian Institute of Columbia
University by the Columbia University Press.
4. KP, Apr. 1, 1949, p. 1.
5. Rezoliutsii i dokumenty XI s"ezda VLKSM (Moscow, 1949) (abbreviated
Rez. i dok. ), p. 50.
6. KP, Apr. 10, 1949, p. 1.
7. For-some of the many possible illustrative statements, see Rez.
pp. 3-5, 13, 50, 51, 55; KP, Mar. 30, 1949, pp. 1, 2; Mar. 31,
pp. 1, 2; Tamara I. Ershova, 0 rabote komsomola v shkole . . .
1949) (hereafter abbreviated as 0 . . shkole), p. 31.
i dok. ,
p. 3; Apr. 1,
(Moscow,
.8. For example, see the chant of praise at the end of the above-mentioned letter
in KR, Apr. 10, 1949, p. 1.
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Footnotes to Fisher
9. For illustrative statements, see KP, Mar. 30, 1949, pp. 1, 2; Mar. 31, p.
3; Apr. 1, pp. 2, 4; Apr. 2, p. 3; Apr. 3, p. 1; Apr. 6, p. 2; Apr. 7, p. 2;
Rez. i dok., pp. 6, 8.
10. Rez. i dok., p. 62.
11. For samples, see Rez. i dok., pp. 27-28, 31; Ershova, 0 . shkole,
p. 8; KP, Mar. 30, 1949, pp. 2, 3; Mar. 31, p. 3.
12. For example, KP, Apr. 1, 1949, p. 3; Rez. i dok., p. 5; V. N. Ivanov,
Izmeneniia v ustave VLKSM . . . (Moscow, 1949), p. 3.
13. For sample references to Party guidance see Rez. i dok., pp. 13, 51; KP,
Mar. 31, 1949, p. 3.
14. For examples, see KP, Mar. 30, 1949, p. 2; Mar. 31, pp. 1, 2, 3; Apr. 1,
p. 2; Rez: i dok., p. 9.
15. For example, see Rez. i dok., pp. 51-53.
16. For illustrative passages, see KP, Mar. 30, 1949, pp. 2, 3; Apr. 1, p. 2;
Apr. 3, p. 4; Apr. 8, p. 2; Apr. 10, p. 1; Rez. i dok., p. 7; Ershova,
0 . shkole, p. 13; Ivanov, Izmeneniia, p. 19.
17. KP, Mar. 31, 1949, p. 2 (Mikhailov speaking).
18. Rez. i dok., p. 7; KP, Mar. 30, 1949, p. 2; Mar. 31, p. 4.
19. For example, see Rez. i dok., p. 8; KP, Mar. 31, 1949, p. 4; Apr. 2, p. 2;
Apr. 3, pp. 2, 3; Apr. 8, pp. 3, 4.
20. The nearest approach to a description at the Congress of 1949 was by Mikhailov,
in KP, Mar. 30, 1949, P? 2.
21. For illustrations of the treatment of top party leaders at the Komsomol
Congresses of 1918, 1919, and 1920, see S"ezd. I, pp. 38-39, 62, 95; S"ezd II,
pp. 33, 67, 121-125, 154-155; S"ezd III, pp. 26, 236-237. For a discussion
of this point, see my microfilmed dissertation, "The Soviet Pattern for Youth
As Revealed in the Proceedings of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918-
1949"- (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1955), pp. 59-61. This
dissertation contains discussions of many of the points made in the present
essay.
22. S"ezd I, pp. 75, 97, 98.
23. S"ezd I, p. 74.
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Footnotes to Fisher
24. S"ezd II, pp. 183-184; Bollshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, supplementary
volume SSSR (1948), cols. 645-646. (Hereafter this source will be abbrevi-
ated BSE, SSSR (1948).
25. S"ezd II, pp. 45-47, 168, 183-184; VKP(b) o komsomole i molodezhi; -sbornik
reshenii i postanovlenii partii o molodezhi (1903-1938) (Moscow, 1938)
(henceforth abbreviated VKP(b)-o komsomole), pp. 77-78.
26. S"ezd III, p. 101.
27. S"ezd II, p. 57; VKP(b) o komsomole, pp. 80-82; S"ezd III, pp. 34 ff.
28. For significant episodes see S"ezd I, pp. 43, 89-91; S"ezd II, pp. 112, 117-
118; S"ezd III, pp. 102, 235.
29. For amplification of these points see my microfilmed dissertation, pp. 47-64.
30. Relevant to this generalization are the issues of the "Young Proletarian Homes,"
the "Youth sections affiliated with the trade unions," the Dunaevskii dispute,
and the "Ukrainian Opposition." For sample passages from the sources, see
S"ezd I, pp. 48-49,
70,
75, 77-78,
90-91, 94-95; S"ezd II, pp. 34-38, 56, 60,
74,
108-110,
141-147,
179-181,
188, 195; S"ezd III, pp. 98, 186, 195, 198-
200,
212-240,
247-248,
257-276,
300, 302;WD) o komsomole, pp. 80-82.
For an account and analysis of these issues, see Chapter II of my microfilmed
dissertation, especially pp. 29-47.
31. See S"ezd I, p. 64; S"ezd II, pp. 123, 171-173; S"ezd III, pp. 31, 37, 242, 243,
305.
32. S"ezd III, p. 11. Preobrazhenskii and Bukharin echoed the same thoughts
(ibid., pp. 31, 37). See also S"ezd II, p. 125; S"ezd III, pp. 33-37.
33. See, for example, S"ezd I, p. 99; S"ezd II, pp. 55-56; S"ezd III, pp. 100,
242-243.
34. S"ezd III, pp. 242-243. Lazar' Shatskin was one of the topmost Komsomolites
of the League's first decade.
35. S"ezd III, p. 305.
36. For a few of the many references to bravery and self-sacrifice, see S"ezd I,
pp. 62, 68; S"ezd II, pp. 16, 19 (an especially colorful passage by Trotsky),
20-21, 30-31, 66; S"ezd III, pp. 29, 31.
37. S"ezd I, pp. 40, 62; S"ezd III, pp. 18, 277, 306-307.
38. S"ezd I, pp. 39-40, 97; S"ezd II, pp. 14, 28, 65-67; S"ezd III, pp. 61-63.
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Footnotes to Fisher
39. S"ezd II, pp. 12-13, 103, 146, 171; S"ezd. III, pp. 6-22, 139, 141.
40. S"ezd II, p. 157; S"ezd III, pp. 7, 18, 20, 29-30, 36-37, 244-245, 300.
41. In the light of this predominance, steps were soon taken to ensure that the
deterministic side of Marxism could not furnish an excuse and refuge for-the
non-conformist. See Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology
(Cambridge, 1952).
42. Vladimir I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1927-1932), V, 79 (Mar.
10, 1902), 347 (Aug. 15, 1903); XXI, 319-320 (Oct. 21 [83, 1917).
43. Lenin, Sochineniia, VIII, 294 (Oct. 17 (43, 1905), 325-326 (Oct. 16, 1-905);
XII, 336-341 (Oct. 16 Z.-3_7, 1908).
44. Lenin, Sochineniia, X, 188 (Dec. 20 ZT7j, 1906).
45. Lenin, Sochineniia, I, 261-262, 292 (late in 1894).
46. Lenin, Sochineniia, I, 94 (1894).
47. Lenin, Sochineniia, IV, 58-59 (Dec. 1900).
48. The Russian word is partiinost'. See Lenin, Sochineniia, IX, 390 (July 14
(i_7, 1906), and XX, 419 (June 6 /"Ray zg, 1917).
49. Lenin, Sochineniia, VIII, 400-401 1Dec. 1 5Tov. i7, 1905), and VIII, 302
(Oct.-17 LJ, 1905).
50. Lenin, Sochineniia, VIII, 386-390 (Nov. 26[13J, 1905).
51. Lenin, Sochineniia, XV, 202 (1911).
52. Lenin, Sochineniia, XVII, 25-26 (Oct. 30 r17_7, 1913).
53. Lenin, Sochineniia, VI, 120-121 (Dec. 8 5ov. 2E, 1903).
54. For a fuller account of this period in Lenin's life, consult Bertram D. Wolfe,
Three Who Made a Revolution; a Biographical History (N.Y. , 1948), chaps.
xiv and xv, especially p. 255. For the colorful conclusion to Lenin's article,
see Lenin, op. cit., VI, 122-123.
55. Lenin-, Sochineniia, VI, 354 (August, 1904).
56. Lenin, Sochineniia, II, 541-542 (1899).
57. Lenin, Sochineniia, IV, 383 (1902), and VII, 149 (Mar. 8 geb. 2_37, 1905).
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58. Lenin, Sochineniia, IV, 391-392 (1902).
Footnotes to Fisher
59. KP, Mar. 20, 1954, pp. 3, 4; Mar. 24, p. 1; Mar. 26, p. 2; Mar. 27, p. 3;
Mar. 30, p. 2.
60. KP, Mar. 20-30, 1954, passim.
61. KP, Mar. 20, 1954, p. 3; Mar. 24, p. 2; Mar. 25, p. 3; Mar. 26, p. 4.
62. KP, Mar. 27, 1954, p. 1.
63. KP, Mar. 27, 1954, p. 2.
64. KP, Feb. 28, 1957, p. 1, translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press
to?DSP), Vol. IX, No. 10 (Apr. 17, 1957), pp. 16-18.
65. Pravda, July 3, 1957, p. 1, translated in CDSP, Vol. IX, No. 23 (July 17,
1957), pp. 7-8.
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SOME RUSSIAN IMAGES OF THE WEST
by
Frederick C. Barghoorn
It might be easier to deal with the theme of this paper in a 300-page book
than in a 6,000-word paper and the study could benefit by several years of re-
search. Fortunately, the problem of the West has been of the liveliest interest
to Russians not only since the 1860's, but indeed since the sixteenth century, and
a wealth of material is available. The term image, as it is used in contemporary
political studies, involves both beliefs and attitudes. We use the term broadly,
to include opinions, judgments and stereotypes. The term Russian, as used here,
refers both to the period of the Russian empire and to the Soviet Union. "West"
here refers to Western Europe, including Great Britain, and also to the English-
speaking countries of the British Commonwealth and the United States. We re-
strict our analysis to "Russia and the West" partly to simplify our problem and
partly because for pre-revolutionary Russia and to a preponderant degree for
Soviet Russia relations with the "West" have been by far the most important ex-
ternal relations.
Thee are striking similarities and significant continuities between the two
periods. There are also essential differences and discontinuities. For the most
part we shall let the facts speak for themselves, subject of course to the guidance
of selection. Our pattern of selection should be indicated. Pre-revolutionary
Russia was, on the whole, an importer of foreign cultural influences. Soviet
?
Russia has_vigorously,exported influence, and with equal vigor restricted cultural
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imports. Pre-revolutionary Russia looked to the West for standards and models
in every field. Soviet Russia, until the sputniks, has imitated the West in tech-
nology and science, but has officially rejected Western civilization, embodied in
"capitalism" and parliamentary democracy. According to the official Soviet
creed, the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 opened a new era of human history. Since
then, the Soviet "socialist" system has allegedly furnished inspiration for
"progressive" people everywhere.
The elite strata of tsarist Russia wanted almost desperately to be considered
"European. " The Soviet leadership characterizes "bourgeois" Europe and America
as "decadent. " The policy makers of the Russian empire accepted membership in
the European system of states. They sought to maximize the position of Russia in
this system, but few Russians wanted to abolish it. In contrast, the Soviet leaders
predict and advocate the ultimate fusion of all nations into one unit and the establish-
ment of a universal but Russianized culture.
Other introductory generalizations need to be made. Tsarist Russia was
not "monolithic." There was an official ideology, formulated by Uvarov, for ex-
ample, in the 1830's, but its claim to a monopoly position was not enforced ef-
fectively. Even the combined efforts of Alexander III and Pobedonostsev in the
1880's could not achieve "integral nationalism" or "integral Christianism. "
1
The partially "Westernized" Russian imperial regime lacked the power and the
will to achieve total control of thought. It permitted much freer access to foreign
political and philosophical concepts than does the Soviet state and greater freedom
of foreign travel by its own subjects and access to Russia by foreigners than does
the Soviet Union, even since the death of Stalin. Even under Nicholas I, the young
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Chernyslievsky could sit in St. Petersburg tea houses and read the Journal des
Debats and- other Western publications.
Pre-revolutionary Russian images of the West may be roughly classified
in terms of their holders' attitudes toward the Russian ancien regime. Terrified
or indignant defenders of throne and altar against the specter of revolution tended
to hate and fear the West. Moderate, reformist conservatives and the thin stratum
of gradualist liberals produced by old Russia looked for inspiration to Western
European monarchical or constitutional traditions, particularly those of Germany
and England. Dynastic ties with Germany, Denmark and England, travel and
study- in Western Europe by Russian aristocrats and bureaucrats and Russian
borrowing of Western European administrative and legal concepts, for example,
in the reforms of Peter the Great or Alexander II, facilitated the identification of
the Russian educated and cosmopolitan "upper upper" classes with their counter-
parts in the West. A fairly good case could be made for Chaadaev's assertion that
"only Russia's government is Western. "3
With the development of something approaching Western European middle
class liberalism in the last two decades of the Empire came the most enthusiastic
4
and unqualified Westernism in Russia's history. Russian revolutionaries, who
wanted to eradicate the nobility and the bourgeoisie, such as it was in Russia,
and-to install Utopia, were more selective in their perception of the West than
liberals,_ conservatives or even reactionaries. Russian radicals and revolutionariep
saw, or -1.T:'anted to see, in the West blueprints for the earthly paradise. As P. V.
Annenkov observed in his memoirs, published in 1880, discontented Russians of
the 1840's had admired France, but their image of France was "an ideal,
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5
imaginary" France.
Since it was more the imaginary West than the actual West that they ad-
mired, Russian radicals were impatient with the failure of the West to put into
practice the revolutionary theories created by its radical thinkers. It was
relatively easy for Russian radicals to become disillusioned with the West, parti-
cularly if they came into close contact with it. One thinks of Herzen's partial
turn to Slavophilism after 1847 or of Lenin's anathematizing of the leaders of
European Social Democracy during and after World War I.
Russian nationalists of the type of Nicholas Danilevsky, as well as some
Russian radicals, regarded the West as an ideological threat to Russian culture.
Some reactionaries and conservatives feared the West as a military and diplo-
matic rival. On the whole, Russia was not strong enough in the second half of
the nineteenth century or, indeed, in the twentieth century, before 1945, to re-
gard itself as a competitor for world leadership against the major powers of
Western Europe or the United States. The extreme anti-Westernism of
Danilevsky, Dostoevsky, Strakhov and the like was not representative either of
official policy or of Russian public opinion. However, it is interesting and in-
structive-to examine Danilevsky's image of the West because in some ways it
resembled that of Stalin. It is one of the paradoxes of our study that the
"internationalist" Bolsheviks, at least after 1930 or 1934, perceived the West in
terms whiCh-would have shocked Marx and Engels, or, for that matter; Alexander
Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevsky, or the younger Lenin. This similarity of senti-
ments reflects a certain similarity of Russian-Western relationships in the two
periods. In both, Western condescension and sophistication have irritated and
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baffled a Russia torn between admiration and envy of the West. Tsars and
commissars alike have deemed it wise to shield their people from the seductive
influence of Western ways, mores, and concepts. In his famous b_ut little read
book, Russia and Europe, Danilevsky criticized the "hostility" of Europe to
Russia, an attitude which he considered reprehensible, since in his opinion Russia
had in 1813 "saved France from the vengeance of Europe and Europe from the op-
pression of France." Danilevsky complained that "Europe does not recognize us
7 .
as its own." Like the Soviet leaders after World War II, Danilevsky contrasted
the good fortune of wealthy America with the harsh fate of Russia, which had been
forced to develop a powerful, centralized state. 8
He advanced an imperialist program for Russian domination of Turkey, the
Balkans and Eastern Europe. However, in contrast to Stalin, Danilevsky did not
claim world leadership for Russia. As his friend Strakhov pointed out Danilevsky
did not desire that the Slays conquer the world, but he maintained that they were
!la special _cultural-historical type" which could co-exist with other cultural
"types." Thus Danilevsky lacked Stalin's imperialistic messianism. However,
Danilevsky 3hared with other reactionaries, such as Pobedonostsev, and with the
Stalinists, fear of infection by allegedly pernicious Western ideas. According to
Danilevsky, "Europeanization, "was Russia's "sickness." In some ways this
attitude resembles that of A. N. Shelepin, current head of the Soviet Youth
League, who after the Sixth World Congress of Youth and Students in Moscow, in
July and and August, 1957, urged in Komsomolskaya Pravda that Soviet youth fight
the "alien" ideas expressed by "some delegations from capitalist countries. "9
The-re was a basic contradiction in the policies of most of even the ablest
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Russian statesmen after the great reforms of the 1860's. They attempted to
reconcile medieval, patriarchal absolutism with modern industrial capitalism.
The spirit of Pobedonostsev dominated Russian monarchy until it was too late to
change. Despite his sympathy for Nicholas II, Sir Bernard Pares demonstrated
10
the truth of this judgment. As Pares noted, even during the crisis of 1905, the
Tsar was-thinking in terms of patriarchal Russia but the educated public was
thinking of British and French constitutions. 11
The court and upper bureaucracy failed in their efforts to win adequate
support for official policy from the Russian educated class. These efforts were
too negative. As Pares observed on the basis of personal experience, in 1907,
"the Russian government hampers the intellectual development of the student in
the name of morality, but it does not provide for him any moral training at all. "12
Florinsky is of the opinion that in the last years of the monarchy the vast majority
of educated Russians were probably to some extent in sympathy with opposition
to the existing order. 13Most students would probably agree with Florinsky and
Pares that the upper and educated classes, even in the last decades of the empire,
were still separated by a deep cultural gulf from the peasant masses. As
Florinsky puts it, the population of the rural areas was "as untouched by any
cultural influence as though they dwelt on another planet. "14 A new elite drawn
in part froth these naive but suspicious peasants rules today a Russia which in
1917 declared an ideological war on the West.
In such a situation as that of Tsarist Russia or of many contemporary
underdeveloped countries it is difficult to steer a middle course between reaction
and revolution. Russian liberals such as Ivan Petrunkevich, Basil Maklakov,
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Peter Struve or Paul Miliukov thought that Russia could adopt the British pattern
of constitutional monarchy. During the period from about 1895 to 1914, or per-
haps even up to 1917, this faith did not seem to be unfounded. Writing in 1910,
Miliukov expressed confidence that Russia was following in the footsteps of England,
France and other advanced countries. The Russian intelligentsia was emerging
from a period in which it had been frustrated and isolated from society and had con-
sequently developed attitudes of alienation and sectarianism. With industrial and
technical progress and the development of specialization, a more practical spirit,
as well as liberalism and a sense of law were developing. Miliukov optimistically
asserted that the political ideas of patriarchalism, xenophobia and nationalism
had completely died out in the consciousness of the Russian people. 15
Russian radicalism before 1914, or at least before 1905, was almost as
synonomous with Westernism as was Russian liberalism. From Belinsky and
Chernyshevsky to Lenin, modernization of Russia in terms of theories originated
by Western radicals was the main aspiration of Russian radicals. The radicals
fought against the "Asiaticism" of old Russia in the name of Western science, both
natural and social. As Dmitri Pisarev put it, all of the representatives of Russian
IIrealism" received their knowledge, "in prepared form," from Western writers
16
and applied it to Russian conditions. Until the early 1930's, when Stalin insti-
tuted his neo-Slavophile revival, Soviet scholars were free to publish the truth
17 .
regarding the Western origin of Russian radical thought. Since the death of
Stalin there has been a partial return to good sense in this, as in some other
fields. It has not, however, proceeded very far. The Soviet intellectual of 1958
probably has less access to Western thought, at least in politics, social science
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and philosophy, than his counterpart of 1927, 1907 or even 1847. Even under
Stalin,- however, a substratum of objectivity regarding Western civilization per-
sisted among Soviet intellectuals.
The Westernism of pre-Soviet Russian radicals was qualified in many ways.
At least two of these should be noted. One concerns the spirit in which the Russians
borrowed from Western thought. The other concerns the content of their borrowings.
The Russian radicals were for the most part angry, disturbed and alienated indi-
viduals. To them Western social theories were not subjects of academic study.
Ideas for them were weapons. The radicals lost faith in autocracy, orthodoxy and
nationality, but they adopted utilitarianism, positivism or Marxism in a combative
spirit. Unselfish utiltarians, altruistic atheists, patriotic defeatists and idealistic
materialists were numerous in nineteenth century Russia. Most Russian radicals,
at least until the beginnings of a more sophisticated outlook toward the end of the
nineteenth century, took a highly uncritical attitude toward Western theories. They
tended to substitute new fanaticisms for old ones. As Berdyaev wrote before the
downfall of the old order, the attitude of the Russian intelligentsia toward science
had been traditionally one of "idol worship. " In the West, the spheres of science
and religion were quite' properly kept in separate compartments, but the Russian
intelligentsia condemned a scientist, or a scientific theory, if the scientist and
his theory were not politically "correct. "18 Later Berdyaev, in his well known
work The Origin of Russian Communism, sought an explanation of the fanaticism
of pro-Western Russian radicals, which could so easily turn into fanatical anti-
Westernism, in patterns of belief derived from Russian Orthodox theology.19
Many works of Berdyaev, Simon Frank, George Fedotov and of some of the modern
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upsycho-cultural" interpreters perform a useful function by calling attention to
the emotional aspects of Russian radicalism. Sociologically, however, Miliukov's
view that Russia was in an earlier stage of a socio-cultural development through
which Western Europe had already passed seems to be a sound one. 20
Almost by definition, Russian radicals were anti-capitalist. Until the
coming of Marx, the majority were probably also anti-industrialist. Even the
"realist" Chernyshevsky hoped that Fourierist producers' cooperatives and a
modernized version of the Russian village commune could solve the social problems
of Russia and protect her from the evils of Western capitalism. Among the big
names of pre-Marxist Russian radicalism only Vissarion Belinsky and D. I.
Pisarev, and they only to a very limited degree, saw hope for Russia in the trans-
plantation of their country of industrialism, factory production and even, with
21
serious reservations, of the European bourgeoisie.
Pisarev's flirtation with the ideology of industrial capitalism--as pre-
sented, for example, in the works of the American economist Henry Charles
Carey--and his tendency to regard rationality as a more useful tool for social
betterment than the class struggle, help to account for the fact that the populists
of the 1860's, 1870's, and 1880's denounced him bitterly, accusing him of selfish
individualism and "epicureanism.'" In a sense, Russian populism resembled
Indian Gandhism. With its failure to achieve decisive results in the 1870's, either
through the "propaganda" preached by Lavrov or the revolutionary terrorism
which culminated in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, some of the Russian
radicals turned to the potent misture of scientism, industrialism and historicism
22
which they found in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The
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"nihilism" of Pisarev and the populism of Chernyshevsky, together with certain
other elements, such as the conspiratorial tactics advocated by Bakunin, Nechaev,
and Tkachev helped to shape and modify the thought of Russian Marxists, parti-
cularly those who followed Lenin rather than the more orthodox, European-oriented
adherents of Martov. For Russians disillusioned with populism Marxism repre-
sented the last word in European social science. N. Valentinov, who was a young
revolutionary during the years when Marxism was capturing the minds of Russian
radicals, has written that
What attracted us in Marxism was...its European-
ism. It came from Europe and it smacked not of
domestic rusticity but of something new and fresh
and attractive. Marxism was a messenger pro-
mising that we would not remain a semi-Asiatic
country but from an Eastern country would be turned
into a Western one, with Western culture and Western
institutions and attributes, representing a free politi-
cal system. 23
The Russian Marxists, including the Bolsheviks, were, or thought thatthey
were, Westernizers. It can, of course, be argued that Lenin -"Russianized"
24
Marxism. Lenin and other Russian Social Democrats, however, were loyal
members of international Social Democracy until the latter's leaders committed
the "treason" of supporting participation, in accordance with nationality affili-
ation, in the "imperialist" war of 1914-1918. Thus it can be argued that Lenin
did not turn against the West but that the proclaimed leaders of the Western
working class movement betrayed their own principles and left true Marxists only
one alternative, that of founding the new, Third International as the victorious
Bolsheviks did in Soviet Russia in 1919.
If Lenin was a Westernizer and a Marxist he was an exceptionally
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impatient, intolerant and autocratic one who helped to make it impossible for the
Westernization of Russia to continue along the lines on which it was proceeding
before the-Bolshevik seizure of power. Eager to exploit the revolution of 1905,
and still more so that of 1917, Lenin laid the foundations of a doctrine and a
practice which is in many ways a flat contradiction of Marxism. According to this
conception, which was perfected by Stalin and has not been repudiated by Stalin's
successors, the Communist Party first makes the revolution and then creates the
proletariat. Stalin's major works, such as Foundations of Leninism (1924),
Problems of Leninism (1926), his report to the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939,
and his proriouncements on linguistics in 1950 set forth the essentials of this
voluntaristic doctrine, which in some ways has more in common with the outlook
25
of Peter the Great than with that of Marx. The "revolution from above" became,
in many ways, a counter revolution.
After the consolidation of Soviet power, the capitalist world was confronted
by backward but "socialist" Russia, armed with the self-righteous dogma of
"Marxism-Leninism." In the name of this intolerant state religion the Bolsheviks
passed sentence of death upon the "feudal" and "capitalist" elites of East and West.
However, they themselves behaved like a strange combination of feudal lords,
religious fanatics and monopoly capitalists. Gradually the new society developed
into a kind of Russian national socialism. One should not underestimate the com-
plexity of this new society. In it there are elements of patriarchal old Russia as
well as of revolutionary, imperialistic totalitarianism and yet also, in the minds
of many, survivals of nineteenth-century populist equalitarianism and of Marxist
social democracy. There is also a technocratic component in this pattern, which,
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together with what has been called "the Marxist tradition in its true 'Leninist'
and social democratic varieties" may lead in the future to the development of
a more liberal order in the Soviet Union. 26
Realism compels us to be concerned more with the actual than with the
potential. The official Soviet Russian image of the West has been and still is that
of a system of enemy states, divided by "contradictions" both domestic and foreign
but identical in their "capitalist" essence and in their determination to do every-
thing in their power to destroy the Soviet Union. This "manichean" vision of the
world, as Raymond Aron has described it, has pervaded the Kremlin's view of
the West for forty years. Within this framework important changes have, of
course, taken place. The Soviet conception of the relationship between the Soviet
Communist Party and the world communist movement, on the one hand, and poli-
tical parties and social classes within countries not ruled by communists, under-
went development and revision. Until 1953, Moscow stressed increasingly that
even the "proletariat" of the West must play the role of pupil rather than partner
of Russia in the "world revolution. "27
Slogans and symbols have changed in
adaptation to movements in the international arena. 28Recently there have been
conflicting interpretations and reinterpretations in Moscow, Belgrade and Warsaw
of the right of communist-ruled countries to choose "different paths to socialism. "
These developments are significant, but concern with them should not distract
our attention from the fact that Moscow, since 1917, has normally regarded non-
communist governments in the West, and indeed in the whole world, as enemies
to be removed with populations to be reeducated.
It is possible that the balance of terror created by nuclear weapons ushered
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in a new and, paradoxically, potentially hopeful era in the relationship between
the Soviet and the non-Soviet worlds. If further major expansion by either group
is impossible, both sides may gain time to work for an ultimate solution of out-
standing tssues. The forces which are transforming Soviet society may work
their way; The very scientists and administrators who, both in Russia and the
West, produce instruments of annihilation may eventually turn the Kremlin poli-
ticians to the paths of peace.
Instead of traversing well worn paths, it might be interesting to suggest
some reasons for the extremely negative images of the West which have been held
and proclaimed by the rulers of Soviet Russia. One major category is made up
of "objective" facts of Western hostility and aggression against Russia and the
Soviet Union. The ancient Russian image of the foreigner as the invader who lays
waste the native land, established in struggles with Tatar, Pole, Swede and
Frenchman, was revived by the conflict with Germany and Austria during World
War I. It wasintensified by British, French, United States and Japanese military
intervention during the revolutionary and civil war period. The menace of im-
perialist Japan and Nazi Germany in the 1930's spurred Stalin's revival of
29
traditional Russian patriotism. From 1932 or 1933 to the present, the image
of the Russian motherland (rodina) in danger of attack by Germans, Japanese,
Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans--Americans since 1945--has been forced
upon the attention of the Soviet people by every device of an energetic and insistent
propaganda.
The message has been reinforced by the words and deeds of foreigners.
Whatever the military needs of the United States, for example, may be, we cannot
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discuss here. It is pertinent, however, to point out that Russians can hardly fail
to be impressed by the apparent menace to their country inherent in American
military policy. Americans who have discussed this question with Soviet Russians
since the death of Stalin, and a sensible change of Soviet policy made it possible
for non-communists to visit Russia once more, have sometimes found that they
could make an impression by pointing out that American bases in Europe, the Near
East, Africa, Formosa, Japan and elsewhere were established in self-defense
against the policies pursued by Stalin from 1944 on. Nevertheless, realism re-
quires that we realize that Russians, as well as Americans, are inclined to i mis-
trust
-
trust the intentions of potential enemies.
At least two other factors probably contribute to the persistence of negative
Soviet images of Western intentions and Western culture. One is the Leninist
doctrine of the implacable hostility of "imperialist" states toward the Soviet Union.
The other is the Kremlin's fear that what it regards as the still immature Soviet
people might be unsettled and corrupted if it were given full and free access to
knowledge of life in the "capitalist" West. Khrushchev revealed this fear when he
accused the French socialist Andre Philip of slyness for advocating exchanges of
workers' delegations.
The teachings of "Marxism-Leninism, " as presented by authorized persons
in the Soviet Union, may in the last analysis represent only a rationalization for
Kremlin policy. Certainly the available evidence indicates that the Soviet people
are allowed to read only those works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin prescribed
by the Krernfin at any given time. The major writings of Marx bulk small indeed
in the Soviet program of political education. 30But even if Marx and Lenin today
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serve only the purpose of providing sacred texts by means of which the Soviet
leadership seeks to assure homogeneity and conformity of thought, the ideas con-
tained in these texts have a life of their own. The theories of Lenin, in particular,
especially those concerned with modern "imperialism, " are plausible enough to
create in the minds of readers who have no opportunity to acquaint themselves
with opposing arguments, a very negative, menacing image of Western intentions
toward the Soviet Union, and of the corruption and injustice of "bourgeois" society.
The frustrations and deprivations of Soviet life, particularly among the
lower income groups and, in general, among those members of society who have
not achieved elite status, might lead to discontent which could be a threat to the
Soviet social order if it were not displaced on to foreign targets. The familiar
phenomenon of scapegoating is more important in dictatorships, particularly in
underdeveloped, rapidly industrializing countries, than it is in prosperous demo-
cracies. Like the Tsars, the Soviet rulers fear the effects of comparison. The
government is such an obvious target for criticism in a dictatorship that it is im-
pelled to put the blame for domestic evils on foreign demons. The strategy of
scapegoating involves control and manipulation of information.
Perhaps one can thus explain the fact that condemnation of Western culture
for its alleged ltdecadencett was intensified after the first Five-Year Plan and
Stalin's collectivization of agriculture had inflicted unprecedented harships on the
peoples of the Soviet Union. The intensification of anti-foreign propaganda in the
1930's was accompanied by the imposition of drastic travel controls, regimentation
of the arts, and other efforts to inculcate images of the outside world desired by
Stalin. Similarly, the anti-Western campaign led by Andrei Zhd.anov in 1946-48
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and the even more virulent drive apparently directed by Stalin himself against
"cosmopolitanism" in 1949-53 can, in part, be traced to a desire to distract the
attention of the population from hardships due to World War II and post-war Soviet
policy, and to overcome the effects of contact with "bourgeois" Europe.
Of course, the concept of the "standard of living" has many relative and
subjective aspects. The present Russian standard of living, particularly if dis-
played skillfully, probably looks much better to a native of Ghana, for example,
than to a Belgian. As the Soviet Union recovered from the effects of the war, a
few "capitalist" foreigners were allowed to visit Russia even in the last year or
two of Stalin's life and since his death there has been a considerable reopening of
Russia. In fact, in some ways Soviet behavior in the field of international cultural
exchanges since 1953 has compared favorably with the policy of the United States,
for example, at least in terms of flexibility and astuteness. Obviously this does
not mean that Soviet citizens have begun to enjoy intellectual freedoms and civil
liberties even remotely comparable to those available in the Western democracies.
For the most part, the change in Soviet behavior in this field has reflected the
confident-outlook of the bosses of a recovered and rapidly developing economy.
They are free from some of Stalin's more neurotic fears. They are also in a po-
sition to adjust their foreign policy more flexibly to changing circumstances.
Let-us conclude this paper with a brief survey of post-Stalin Soviet images
of the West, particularly of the United States. There has been a trend toward a
more empirical point of view in the Kremlin. This is indicated by the new Soviet
estimate of the "foreign threat. " G. M. Malenkov even went so far as to state,
in 1954, that a new war would cause the destruction of "world civilization" and
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not merely of capitalism, as Soviet doctrine had previously maintained. It seems
likely that a coalition of Khrushchev and of top Soviet military leaders overruled
what they regarded as Malenkov's somewhat optimistic estimate of the international
situation. However, even the belligerent but ebullient Khrushchev made an im-
portant revision of the Lenin thesis that as long as imperialism existed wars were
"inevitable," in his report to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union in February, 1956. Khrushchev stated that war was not
"fatalistically inevitable. "31
At the same time, however, Khrushchev reaffirmed
the necessity of "a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into a soci-
alist one." He asserted that under favorable circumstances, where the "capitalists"
were weak, the revolutionary transfer of power could take place without a civil
32
war.
There have been indications recently of a revival of Stalin's expectation
of the 1930's, that Russia can eventually defeat the West in the "battle of pro-
duction." This, combined with scientific and technical leadership could bring a
preponderance of Soviet influence throughout the world within the foreseeable
future, and without all-out war. In this perspective, the West is viewed as a still
formidable but weakened competitor in the world struggle for men's minds.
Khrushchev, in his speech of November 6, 1957, asserted that within the next
fifteen years the Soviet Union would be able to surpass the United States 1957 out-
put of the "most important types of products. " Although the United States would
not stand still, it was reasonable to believe, according to Khrushchev, that the
USSR could, within "an historically short period" defeat the United States in
"peaceful competition. "33 A. N. Nesmeianov, President of the Academy of
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Sciences of the USSR, in his speech at the Twentieth Party Congress asserted that
the pace of scientific training and development in the Soviet Union had surpassed
that of England or the United States. 34
What is the Soviet image of the destiny of the United States? Very confi-
dent expectations were revealed by A. Sobolev in an article in the authoritative
central committee magazine Kommunist in 1956. According to Sobolev the United
States will eventually be "surrounded" by "a friendly socialist environment. " It
will then be easy to elect a "government of a new type. "35 Other authoritative
Soviet sources havq indicated that the present Soviet policy of cultural diplomacy
and economic assistance is designed to eliminate Western influence from such
countries as Egypt, India and Indonesia, and eventually to bring about the adoption
of the Soviet social system by the underdeveloped countries. 36
Of course, the vision of a Moscow-dominated communist world in which the
Western nations will no longer represent a threat to Soviet Russia but will be
beneficiaries of "socialism" and eventually of "communism" has been suggested
in many of -Khrushchev's statements, at least once in the menacing form of an as-
sertion thaf"we will bury you." According to an important Soviet book published
since the death of Stalin, after the establishment of the "universal dictatorship of
37
the proletariat" a "single universal human culture" will take shape. This is a
vision more grandiose than any dreamed of by Danilevsky or Dostoevsky or even by
any of the Muscovite theologians of the sixteenth century.
Evidence is increasingly available that while Soviet youth and intellectuals
on the whole share the "socialist" values professed but not practiced by the present
regime in Russia, they have no desire to conquer the world. Moreover, some
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admire much in Western culture and many resent the Kremlin's efforts to restrict
freedom of contact and communication. In an age in which nationalism and in-
dividualism are still on the march, even if often in distorted form, especially in
the awakening underdeveloped countries, it does not seem likely that the Kremlin
will be indefinitely successful in its international missionary endeavor. The age
of empires 'is over and the sooner Moscow realizes it the better. On the other
hand, Western arrogance has become anachronistic in the extreme. In the era of
the hydrogen bomb all nations will live in some sort of peace or they will not live
at all. How soon can the Soviet ruling class produce a culture that will not need to
defend itself by means of censorship, radio jamming and archaic dogmas about the
wicked and decadent West? How soon can the United States overcome its own
cultural provincialism? Perhaps it is not inappropriate to ask such a question,
as at least a partial offset to the imbalance inevitable when one examines only one
side of an argument, even if it is the "other" side's image of one's own civilization.
The Soviet image of the West is one of the indices of Kremlin intentions
which repays analysis. Perhaps in some small degree we may influence it.
Certainly we must constantly compare it with all available facts, historical and
contemporary. It would be idle to expect an early or easy change in attitudes
deeply rooted in Russian experience, Leninist doctrine, and the structure of inter-
national Politics.
The attitudes discussed herein may be viewed as defenses of an under-
developed society, the compensatory reactions of which, however, represent a
long-term challenge to a once complacent West.
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FOOTNOTES TO BARGHOORN
1. See Robert F. Byrnes, "Pobedonostsev On the Instruments of Russian
Government", in Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, Ernest
J. Simmons, Ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 113-128.
Z. See N. A. Alekseev, Dnevnik N. G. Chernyshevskogo, Part I (Moscow, 1931),
pp. 101, 102, etc. In 1948, Chernyshevsky hoped for a German-French attack
on Russia.
3. Alexander von Schelting, Russland und Europa (Bern, 1948), p. 14.
4. This development is spelled out for the first time in English in George Fischer's
valuable study, Russian Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).
5. Literaturnye vospominaniia (Leningrad, 1928), p. 291.
6. N. Ya. Danilevski, Rossiia i Evropa (Fourth Ed., St. Petersburg, 1889),
p. 20. The work was first published in the form of articles in the magazine
Zarya in 1869 and as a book in 1872.
7. Ibid. , pp. 50-53.
8. Ibid. , pp. 545-557.
9. Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 17, 1957.
10. Sir Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy, (London, 1939). Pares
called Pobedonostsev an "inverted nihilist."
11. Ibid., p. 81.
12. Quoted by William H. E. Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage (Pittsburg,
1950), p. 224.
13. Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (two volumes,
New York, 1953), Vol. II, 1255.
14. Ibid., p: 1256.
15. See, for example, Miliukov's contribution to Intelligentsiia v Rossii (St.
Petersburg, 1910), pp. 89-191.
16. D. I. Pisarev, Sochineniia Pisareva, (six volumes in two, St. Petersburg,
1897), Vol. V, 147.
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17. As recently as 1930 a Russian translation of the Marquis de Custine's famous
La Russie en 1839, once praised by Herzen, was published in Moscow. The
1940 and 1954 editions of M. V. Nechkina's standard Istoriia SSSR include
bibliographical references to the 1930 Soviet translation of Custine. In the
1940 edition see Vol. II, 203; in the 1954 edition, Vol. II, 151. This indicates
a certain access to attitudes towards old Russia capable in some instances,
perhaps, of stimulating critical thought about Soviet institutions.
18. Nikolai-Berdyaev in Vekhi (4th ed.; Moscow, 1909), pp. 6, 11, 17.
19. A recent attempt to apply Berdyaev's concepts has been made by Emanuel
Sarkisyanz in his study Russland und der Messianismus des Orients
(Tuebingen, 1955).
20. Thomas G. Masaryk, in his famous work, The Spirit of Russia (2 vols.;
London: 1919) reached conclusions somewhat similar to the authors already
mentioned, in stressing the "uncritical objectivism" of most Russian thought,
including that of the Russian radicals. A somewhat similar, but less tolerant
view is taken by Peter Scheibert in the first volume of his projected three-
volume study, Von Bakunin zu Lenin (Leiden, 1956).
21. On the attitude of Pisarev and some other Russian radicals toward industriali-
zation see Alexander Gerschenkron, "The Problem of Economic Development
in Russian Intellectual History of the Nineteenth Century", in Simmons, op.
cit., pp. 11-39, and F. C. Barghoorn, "The Russian Radicals of the 1860's
and the Problem of the Industrial Proletariat", The Slavonic Review (American
Series, II, 1942-1943, Part One), XXI (March, 1943), 57-69.
22. The word "historicism" is used here in the sense in which it is employed by
Karl _R. Popper in his major work, The Open Society and Its Enemies
(Princeton, 1950).
23. N. Valentinov, Vstrechi s Leninym (New York, 1953), p. 50.
24. A recent stimulating presentation of this point of view is given by Robert V.
Daniels in his article "Lenin and the Russian Revolutionary Tradition", in
Russian Thought and Politics, "Harvard Slavic Studies, Vol. IV" (The Hague,
1957), pp. 339-354.
25. Ample confirmation of the above assertion can be found in the historical and
biographical works of Betram D. Wolfe, Isaac Deutscher, E. H. Carr and
other scholars.
26. For the above quotation see S. V. and P. Utechin, "Patterns of Non-Conformity",
Problems of Communism (Washington, D. C.), VI (May-June, 1957), 29.
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Footnotes to Barghoorn
27. For a stimulating discussion of three fundamental strategies of communism,
culminating in the "Neo-Maoist" strategy, see John H. Kautsky, Moscow and
the-Communist Party of India (New York, 1956), particularly the first and
last chapters.
28. See, for example, Kermit E. McKenzie, "The Messianic Concept in the Third
International, 1935-1939", in Simmons, op. cit., pp. 516-530, and F. C.
Barghoorn, The Soviet Image of the United States (New York, 1950).
29. I have dealt with various aspects of these developments in The Soviet Image of
the United States and in Soviet Russian Nationalism (New York, 1956).
30. See, for example, Programma kursa dialekticheski i istoricheslci materializm,
approved in 1955 by the Department of Dialectical and Historical Materialism
of the Higher Party School attached to the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, for use in "evening universities of Marxism-
Leninism" of Party city committees (Moscow, 1955), and numerous other such
programs. See also the selection of works by Marx and Engels collected by
Paul W. Blackstock and Bert F. Hoselitz under the title The Russian Menace
to Europe (Glencoe, Ill. , 1952). The editors state that the materials contained
in this book were not available to Soviet readers.
31. XX S"ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii sovetskogo soyuza, Vol. I (Moscow, 1956),
p. 37. On the apparent disagreement between the Khrushchev and Malenkov
elements in 1954-1955 see the perceptive article by Herbert Dinerstein, "The
Revolution in Soviet Strategic Thinking", Foreign Affairs, XXXVI (January,
1958), 241-252.
32. XX S"ezd, op. cit., pp. 39-40.
33. Pravda, November 7, 1957, p. 4.
34. XX S"ezd, op. cit., pp. 373-374.
35. A. Sobolev, "0 parlamentskoi forme perekhoda k sotsializmu", Kommunist,
No. 14 (1956), 14-32. On the United States, see especially 21-24 and 31-32.
36. On Soviet intentions toward the underdeveloped countries, the article by E.
Zhukov, "Raspad kolonialnoi sistemy imperializma", in Partiinaia Zhizn,
No. 16 (1956), 41-48, is illuminating.
37. G. G. Karpov, 0 sovetskoi kulture i kulturnoi revoliutsii v SSSR (Moscow,
1954), pp. 76-77.
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THE IMAGE OF DUAL RUSSIA
by
Robert C. Tucker
When Ilya Ehrenburg hopefully put the word "thaw" into currency soon after
Stalin's death, by making it the title of a novel, he may or may not have known that
it had a previous history in Russia. According to some pre-revolutionary sources,
Russians began to talk of a "thaw" at the close of the reign of Iron Tsar Nicholas I,
who died in 1855. The thaw was manifested in a change of atmosphere, a relaxation
of censorship, and other signs of softening of the bureaucratic regimentation of
society which marked Nicholas' long reign, especially in the so-called years of
official terror after 1848. The image of the thaw projected the period lived through
as a gray interminable Russian winter of despotism above and paralysis of society
below. The incipient relaxation of state controls was seen as the harbinger of a
coming "spring" of liberalization. 1The comparison with the official terror of the
last years of Stalin's reign, and with the atmosphere in Russia as felt in the early
months after his death in 1953, is very striking. No knowledge of obscure history
books was needed for the word "thaw" to come back into circulation. For Russia
had just lived-through another long gray winter of despotism above and paralysis
of society below, and was now, once again, awakening to hope for change.
The symbolism of the thaw is particularly revealing in its implicit com-
parison of the Russian state with a bleak elemental force which holds the land in
its grasp and is a blight on the life of society. This points to an element of Russian
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thought and feeling about the state which has been relatively constant in its core
through a large part of the history of the country, relatively independent of the
shift of political seasons. I propose to call this the image of dual Russia. It em-
braces, firstly, a consciousness, which remained more or less inarticulate for a
long time, of Russia as a double entity: Russian state and Russian society. On
the one hand, there is vlast' or gosudarstvo, the centralized autocratic state power,
embodied in the person of the Tsar and operating through a hierarchy of bureau-
cratic institutions and their local agents. In the nineteenth century, everything
pertaining to vlast', including the autocrat, the court, the bureaucratic officialdom,
the official customs, official uniforms, official truth or ideology and so on, came
to be subsumed under the concept of "official Russia. " On the other hand, there
is the population at large, the society, nation or people (obshchestvo, narod). It
came to be conceived as a separate and distinct Russia with a life and truth of its
own. This we may call unofficial or "popular Russia."
The image of dual Russia is not simply a conception of the state and people
as two different Russias. It also comprises an evaluative attitude, or rather a
range of such attitudes. Their common denominator is the apprehension of the
autocratic state power as an alien power in the Russian land. The relation between
the state and the society is seen as one between conqueror and conquered. The
state is in control, but in the manner of an occupying power dealing with a con-
quered populace. It is the active party, the organizing and energizing force, in
the drama of dual Russia, whereas the population at large is the passive and sub-
ordinate party, the tool and victim of the state's designs. An alien power is, of
course, one towards which a great many different positions may be taken, ranging
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from active collaboration through resignation and passive resistance to outright
rebelliousness. However, there is a unifying thread in this whole range of re-
sponses. The liberal scholar and statesman Miliukov, writing in exile after the
1917 revolution, summed it up by saying that the state power had always remained
in Russia- "an outsider to whom allegiance was won only in the measure of his
utility. The people were not willing to assimilate themselves to the state, to feel
a part of it, responsible for the whole. The country continued to feel and to live
independently of the state authorities. "2 In what follows I wish to examine the back-
ground of this attitude and to outline the view that the story of the Soviet period in
Russian history is partly a tale of how the state became an outsider again in the
consciousness of the Russian people.
The image of dual Russia is grounded in the actualities of Russian histori-
cal experience with the state. The consciousness of the state as an alien power
grew out of a real separation of the state from the nation. According to Miliukov
again, the two foundations of the Russian system as it evolved in Muscovy from
the sixteenth century onward were the "autocratic power" on the one hand and the
"population" on the other, the two "more or less imperfectly linked by a system
of mediating governmental organs. "3 Far from developing as a dependent political
superstructure" over the social-economic "base," the Russian state organism
took shape as an autonomous force acting to create or recreate its own social
base, to shape and reshape the institutional pattern of society, in a series of revo-
lutions from-above. The state showed itself in what might, broadly speaking, be
called a totalitarianizing role in relation to society. It brought the society under
its centralized control and direction. The fastening down of serfdom upon the
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peasants in the seventeenth century was only one great phase in the historical
process of the "binding of all classes" in compulsory service to the autocracy. A
system arose whose guiding principle was the idea of the servitude of all sections
of society to the state. Claiming ownership of the land, the state power destroyed
the boyars as a class, and created a controlled nobility of "serving men" whose
landed estates were allotted on condition of military service to the state. This was
the foundation of the growth in later times of the Russian system of an "aristocracy
of rank" (chin), under which bureaucratic distinction rather than: birth became the
highroad of entry into the nobility.
The mainspring of the whole "binding" process was the drive of the auto-
cratic power to aggrandize the national territory, its "gathering of lands, " through
which Muscovy expanded from an area of about 15, 000 square miles in 1462 to one-
fifth of the earth's surface in 1917. The expansionist drive placed a great premium
-
upon military strength. The country being economically backward, technologically
inferior to its Western neighbors, the government sought to mobilize the resources
for war by enlisting the population directly in its service. The exploitative re-
lation of the state to the society brought an extension of coercive controls and the
hypertrophy of the centralized governmental system. In his summation of modern
Russian history from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the historian
Kliuchevsky writes that "the expansion of the state territory, straining beyond
measure and exhausting the resources of the people, only bolstered the power of
the state without elevating the self-consciousness of the people.... The state
swelled up;-the people grew lean. "4
The image of dual Russia was an outgrowth of this entire process. But
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it was one particular episode in the process, Peter the Great's revolution from
above, which did most to make the people conscious of the state as a separate and
alien power in their midst. Peter particularly aspired to borrow technology from
the West, and not civilization in the wider sense, but in the process he reorganized
the state administration along new centralized lines, set up the governmental
bureaucracy in a new capital separate from the rest of the country, and proceeded
by forcible means to carry through a cultural revolution designed to change the old
Russian way of life. The group most immediately affected by the cultural revo-
lution was the bureaucratic serving class itself, so that the rift between the state
and the people became a visible fact of manners, language, dress and so on.
Consequently, later writers tend to date the division of Russia into two entities
from Peter's time. Alexander Herzen, for example, wrote in 1853 that "Two
Russias came into hostile opposition from the beginning of the eighteenth century."
He explained:
On the one hand, there was governmental, imperial,
aristocratic Russia, rich in money, armed not only
with bayonets but with all the bureaucratic and police
techniques taken from Germany. On the other hand,
there was the Russia of the dark people, poor, agri-
cultural, communal, democratic, helpless, taken by
surprise, conquered, as it were, without battle. 5
So foreign did the Russian government become in the eyes of its own peasant
people, wrote Herzen elsewhere, that Russian officials in uniform seemed to the
peasant to be representatives of the German government. In the military officer,
he saw a policeman; in the judge, an enemy; in the landowner, who was invested
with the .authority of the state, a mighty force with which he was unable to cope. 6
Thus, gosudarstvo came to appear, in the eyes of a majority of the people,
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as a kind of occupying power in the Russian land. Summing up this development,
Sir Donald MacKenzie Wallace wrote at the close of the nineteenth century:
It was in the nature of things that the Government,
aiming at the realization of designs which its subjects
neither sympathized with nor clearly understood,
should have become separated from the nation....
A considerable section of the people looked on the
reforming Tsars as incarnations of the spirit of
evil, and the Tsars in their turn looked upon the
people as raw material for the realization of their
political designs.... The officials have naturally
acted in the same spirit. Looking for direction
and approbation merely to their superiors, they
have systematically treated those over whom they
were placed as a conquered or inferior race. The
state has thus come to be regarded as an abstract
entity, with interests entirely different from those
of the human beings composing it; and in all matters
in which state interests are supposed to be involved,
the rights of individuals are ruthlessly sacrificed. 7
The fact that the state, by virtue of its role in Russian historical experience, had
come to be widely regarded as an alien and "abstract entity" is of great importance
for an understanding of the turbulent course of events in Russia between 1855 and
1917. It helps to explain the paradox that liberalizing reform from above in the
1860's coincided with the rise of an organized revolutionary movement from below,
and also the circumstance that in February, 1917, "A few days of street disorders
in St. Petersburg, and the refusal of the soldiers of the city garrison to put them
down, were enough to topple the Tsarist regime. It made no real attempt to defend
itself, for it proved to have no supporters. "8
?
II
The thaw at the close of Nicholas I's reign marked the beginning of a new
period in the life of Russia, in which the direction of the earlier Russian historical
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process was decisively reversed. It was the time of "unbinding." The government
itself remained autocratic; the system of administration, centralized and bureau-
cratic. However, the reforms of the sixties, beginning with the abolition of serf-
dom, inauguarated the emancipation of Russian society from the all-encompassing
tutelage of the bureaucratic state. Official Russia, so to speak, contracted, per-
mitting unofficial Russia to emerge into the open from behind the "shroud" with
which, as Herzen expressed it, the government had covered up the life of the
country. Forces in Russian society acquired a certain scope for independent self-
expression. The monologue of the state with its agents gave way to a dialogue be-
tween the state and society. Above all, between the state and that element of
society which called itself the "intelligentsia."
Peter Struve, writing in the early twentieth century, suggested that the
spiritual hallmark of the Russian intelligentsia was "its estrangement from the
state and hostility towards it. "9 This statement may have been made in a spirit
of polemical exaggeration, yet it is certainly true that a sense of apartness from
the official world, and of closeness to the world of the Russian people--or to what
this world was imagined to be--was characteristic of this element. A conscious-
ness of the fundamental duality of Russia typified the mind of the intelligentsia,
and its heart was with the people and against the state, with the muzhik and against
the chinovnik. This educated minority, drawn from different strata of society,
formed an image of itself as the "self-conscious people," the thinking organ of the
narod. That image underlay its major movement in the second half of the nine-
teenth century, the narodnichestvo or populism, and in particular the crusade of
"going to the people" in the 1870's. The intense Russian national feeling
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characteristic of the intelligentsia was a feeling which tended to delete gosudarstvo,
the whole official world, from the concept of the nation. It was a peculiar form of
anti-state nationalism which inspired Herzen, for example, to say that "The Russian
-
government is not Russian. Its usual direction is despotism and reaction. It is
more German than Russian, as the Slavophiles say. This explains the sympathy
and love of other governments for it. "10
One of the most original and influential creations of the mind of the Russian
intelligentsia was Slavophilism, a philosophy of life which revolved in great
measure around the image of dual Russia. Konstantin Aksakov provided a classic
statement of this philosophy in a memorandum of 1855 to Alexander II, "On the
Internal Condition of Russia. It This memorandum was one of the results of the
nineteenth-century thaw. In it Aksakov argued that the Russian people, being prob-
ably the only truly Christian people on earth, was "non-political" (negosudarstvennyi),
e.,i. fundamentally disinterested in politics, constitutions, revolutions, repre-
sentative_government, and so-forth. For the un-Christian power-principle em-
bodied in the state as an institution was foreign to this people's nature. It was es-
sentially--a "social people," concerned with spiritual, moral, cultural and economic
freedom_in a Christian communal society, of which the Russian village commune
(rnir) was the nucleus. Accordingly, it had originally invited the northern Vikings
to come and exercise the governmental function in Russia, and there had taken
-
shape in ancient Russia a peculiarly Russian system, a marriage of convenience
between-"state" and "land" founded on the principle of "mutual non-interference."
The state authority was freely accorded the right to govern autocratically, while
for its pa-rt the "land"--that is, the people--was left free and undisturbed in the
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practice of its Christian Communal way of life and culture, and also enjoyed the
_
opportunity to voice its opinions on national affairs to the state authority at periodi-
cally convened "gatherings of the land." Later this system of alliance broke down.
In the person of Peter the Great, the state invaded the land, assaulted the customs,
infringed upon the religion, suppressed all freedom. As a result of this revolution
from above, "the previous alliance was replaced by the yoke of the state over the
land, and the Russian land became, as it were, the conquered party and the state
the conqueror. "11
The present condition of Russia, Aksakov continued, could be traced to
the Petrine aggression of the state against the land, and to the refusal of Peter's
successors to admit and rectify the wrong done. What was the present condition?
Russia was sick, and the cause was the unnatural relation of the state to society,
the repression of spiritual and social freedom. The imposing external position of
the Russian empire contrasted with the profound and pervasive moral crisis with-
in. The bloated bureaucratic organism of official Russia was shot through with
venality and corruption. There was no spontaneity of social self-expression. In
the stifling atmosphere of unfreedom, no one dared to speak the truth aloud, and
nothing was heard but official lies and fulsome adulation of the Tsar. Above all,
the government and the people were mutually estranged:
The present condition of Russia is a condition of
internal division covered up with shameless lies.
The government, and with it the upper classes,
have separated themselves from the people and
become alien to it.... The government and the
? people do not understand each other, and their
relations are not friendly. 12
What was the remedy for the internal crisis? In the long run, it was for the state
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to undo the historic wrong done to the land, to withdraw to its proper govern-
mental sphere and stop encroaching upon the non-political life of the people.
Meanwhile, the urgent immediate need was to let the fresh air and light of free
speech exert a medicinal effect. The liberation of public opinion was the means
by which the government could cleanse out the bureaucratic corruption and repair
the moral estrangement between itself and the people: "To the government un-
limited state power; to the people complete moral freedom, freedom of life and
spirit. To the government the right of action and so of law; to the people the right
of opinion and so of speech. "13 Putting it in contemporary terms, the Slavophile
program for Russia was in?essence anti-totalitarian, aspired to roll back the en-
croachments of the state on the territory of society, and looked to establishment
of a system of peaceful coexistence between an absolutistic Russian government
and an apolitical Russian people.
According to an old saying in Russia, the populists (narodniki) were
Slavophiles in rebellion. The foundations of the philosophy of Russian populism
were laid by Herzen. He had been a leader of the Slavophiles' opponents, the
Westerners so-called. As they saw it, the Slavophiles' idealized image of ancient
Russia as a voluntary alliance of the state and the land was but a "retrospective
utopia, " and Russian Orthodoxy had never been anything but "apathetic Catholicism. "14
But Herzen, after taking up voluntary exile in Western Europe, discovered deep
Slavophile affinities in his thinking. The Slavophile conception of the Russian
people as essentially a "social people" became the cornerstone of Herzen's
"Russian socialism." It pictured the muzhik as the man of the future in Russia
and the_mir as the foundation of a socialist society. Herzen also, as already noted,
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accepted the Slavophile image of dual Russia.
But populism wrought a far-reaching change in the picture of the relation
between the two Russias. The Slavophile program of peaceful coexistence between
the state and the land by courtesy of a repentent Tsarist authority was discarded,
as was the conception of the Russian people as "non-political." Popular Russia
became "revolutionary Russia" (Herzen's phrase), and the image of dual Russia
became an' image of two Russias at war. Revolutionary populism called the land
to arms against the state. Herzen, writing in his London paper Kolokol in 1861,
issued a declaration of war against official Russia on behalf of the Russian people.
The occasion was the suppression by troops under the command of General
Bistrom of student disturbances at the University of St. Petersburg over the
peasant question. Addressing the imprisoned students, Herzen wrote: "Where
shall you go, youths from whom knowledge has been shut off? To the people r
Prove to these Bistroms that out of you will emerge not clerks but soldiers, not
mercenaries but soldiers of the Russian people !"15
The declaration of war evoked
a powerful response among the Russian student youth, and the following year saw
the rise of the secret society, "Land and Freedom." Revolutionary populism had
come into being as an organized movement. At this time there appeared in Russia
a manifesto, "Young Russia," which expressed a philosophy of revolutionary
terrorism-against the state. Dividing all Russia into two parts--the party of the
people_and the party of the Emperor--it called for the physical extermination of
all those who stood or even sympathized with the party of the Emperor. Inscribed
on the banners of the Russian revolutionary movement was the image of dual Russia.
But _popular Russia was not then the "revolutionary Russia" imagined by
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Herzen and the revolutionary populists. The conception of two Russias at war
was not realistic, and the would-be soldiers of the people found themselves more
or less in the position of generals without an army. The failure of the movement
of "going to the people" in the seventies showed what a chasm existed between the
peasantry itself and the revolutionary intellectuals. Although there were many
isolated instances of local peasant disorders in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the peasantry in general proved politically inert. Here it should be noted
that the peasant mind did not equate official Russia and the Tsar. On the contrary,
it tended to look to the Tsar--as distinguished from his bureaucracy--for help in
satisfying its claim to the land which remained still in the possession of the nobles
after 1861. On the whole, as Miliukov later observed, the rural population, while
always remaining in a sense "natural anarchists," tended to render passive obedi-
ence to a state authority which did not get too much "under the skin," and this
peculiar combination of peasant characteristics explains to a large extent the events
of the Russian revolution. 16
That is, the anarchist tendency got the upper hand
in the special conditions prevailing in 1917, and the tendency to render passive
obedience made for acceptance of the new dictatorial state authority which emerged
out of the storm.
Decline of faith in the peasantry as a revolutionary force, and in terrorism
as the prime revolutionary weapon, led some populists to turn to Marxism as the
ideology of revolution. The 1890's witnessed a contest between populists and
_
Marxists for hegemony of the revolutionary movement, followed by the rise of
Leninism or Bolshevism as claimant to the role of sole authentic voice and organ
of Russian Marxism. The relative success with which Marxism "took" among the
_
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radical intelligentsia of Russia may seem surprising in view of Marx's vision of his-
tory as turning on the axis of class struggle. The basic realities of mankind, ac-
cording to. Marx, are social-economic classes at war, and the war is now culminating
in a final battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Not only were these latter two
forces still only nascent in Russia. Its history, as noted earlier, turned not on class
17
struggle but on the issue of relations between the state and society. Despite this,
the Russian revolutionary mentality found no difficulty in assimilating itself to Marx-
ism, or Marxism to itself. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that this mentality
was, even in pre-Marxist days, hostile to capitalism. But the chief facilitating cir-
cumstances was the fact that Marx pictures the class struggle in political terms. He
argues, that is, that the war between class and class has to be decided in the final
analysis by overthrowing the existing state. Further, his doctrine appealed to the
anarchist streak in the Russian revolutionary mentality, for it visualizes the "withering
away" of the institution of the state after the final revolution. Hence it was entirely
possible for a Russian revolutionary whose mind was obsessed with the image of dual
Russia to become a Marxist and continue in that capacity the indigenous revolutionary
tradition of warfare against official Russia. He could march to battle against the
state with the war cry of "class struggle" on his lips. He could talk as a Marxist
while thinking and feeling as a Russian revolutionary populist. An Ivanov-Razumnik
points out, "the Russian Marxists of the nineties identified the social with the
political by contending that 'every class struggle is a political struggle'; this was
an expression in new form of the old People's Will (i. e. , populist--R. T.) thesis,
.0To the social through the political. n'18
All this applies particularly to Lenin and his political creation--
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Russian Bolshevism. He came to the fore during the nineties as one of the
leaders in the Marxist polemic against the populists. Against them he contended
that not the muzhik--who still comprised nearly nine-tenths of the Russian popu-
lation--but the industrial worker was the man of the future in Russia, and that
the rise of Russian capitalism was to be seen as a hopeful and not a deplorable
phenomenon from the revolutionary standpoint. However, the political person-
ality of Lenin was shaped in very significant degree by the tradition of the Russian
revolutionary populists of the sixties, especially Chernyshevsky. The principal
motivating force was a consuming hate for gosudarstvo, for official Russia and
everything it connoted. He married the old image of two Russias at war with
Marxism. His theory of the Marxist party as a small disciplined body of revo-
lutionaries drawn from the intelligentsia and acting as the politically conscious
"vanguard" of the working class revived in a new form the old image of the in-
telligentsia as the "self-conscious people." Finally, in his State and Revolution
and other writings, he accentuated the anarchist theme in Marxism. "The prole-
tariat needs the state only temporarily, " he wrote. "We do not at all disagree
with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as an aim." The
immediate purpose of the revolution would be to smash gosudarstvo to pieces, to
raze the old state apparatus to the ground, and then to replace it with a system
of direct rule by the armed people without bureaucrats ("privileged persons
divorced from the masses and standing above the masses"), preparatory to the
19
withering away of all statehood. Lenin thought of the revolution as the rising
of popular Russia against official Russia. In his mind, the Marxist concept of the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" took concrete shape as a vision of popular Russia
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20
in power. Thus Leninism was a subtly Russified Marxism, a fusion of Marxist
symbols and concepts with much of the content of thought and feeling character-
istic of the old Russian revolutionary populism. Lenin conceived his mission in
the international Marxist movement as that of resurrecting its "revolutionary soul. "
But it was a very Russian spirit of revolution which he breathed back into Marxism.
III
If the February Revolution of 1917 culminated the process of "unbinding"
of Russian society, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October and establishment
of a new centralized and dictatorial state authority laid the foundation for a re-
version of Russia to the past. The results of sixty years of Russian history in the
way of emancipation of society from the aegis of the state were nullified. In
practice, the dictatorship of popular Russia meant the dictatorship of popular
Russia's self-appointed organ of consciousness, the Bolshevik Party. This, along
with the nationalization of the economy, made gosudarstvo again the dominating
,
factor in the situation. "The most pressing and topical question for politics to-
day, " wrote Lenin in September, 1917, "is the transformation of all citizens into
workers and employees of one big 'syndicate, ' namely, the state as a whole. "21
In his wildly utopian imagination, he thought that this could be done without re-
creating a governmental bureaucracy standing above society. Before he died,
_
however, he is reported to have remarked ruefully: "We have become a bureau-
cratic Utopia."
Lenin's legacy was the one-party dictatorship and the New Economic
Policy, under which the state retained only the "commanding heights" of the
_
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economy and permitted 25,000,000 private peasant farms to exist and contribute
to economic revival. During this transitional period, the situation in Russia fell
once again into the historic pattern of duality. In Miliukov's formula for the
system in Muscovy, there was the "autocratic power" on the one hand and the
-
"population" on the other, the two "more or less imperfectly linked by a system
of mediating governmental organs." This was reflected in the concept of the
Soviets, cooperatives and other mass organizations as "levers" of the party's
influence and authority among the population. Thus the outcome of the revolution,
politically speaking, was that Russia had reverted to a situation with strong parallel
to the remote past. Since, however, the new dictatorial state authority permitted
the population or very large sections of it to carry on many non-political pursuits
more or less without hindrance, the state, at the height of the N. E. P., was not
on the whole experienced by the Russian people as an oppressive power. The
N. E. P. was, in a way, a period of peaceful coexistence between the state and the
land. That, at any rate, is the way it tends to be remembered. It has become a
kind of "retrospective utopia" for very many among the present generation. Just
as the Slavophiles once pictured the pre-Petrine past as a satisfactory time in the
relations between the government and the people, so now the N. E. P. is recalled
by very-many Russians as the golden age of Soviet Russia, when the state, dicta-
torial though it was, did not trespass too much upon the popular domain, the way
of life of the people. In both instances, the past is evaluated in relation to what
was expe-rienced in the historical aftermath.
In-Soviet Russia, the aftermath was Stalinism, the essential meaning of
which was the dynamic resurgence of gosudarstvo. Lenin and the Bolshevik
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Party had, by the seizure of power and establishment of a centralized dictatorial
state structure, created a medium in which this movement could arise and flourish.
But it was Stalin, a man in whom the spiritual affinities with the revolutionary
anti-state Russian intelligentsia were quite tenuous, who became its conscious
instrument and architect. In the peculiarly Russian terms whose meaning has
been considered above, Stalinism meant, to begin with, the invasion of the land by
the state. Reviving the historic pattern of revolutionism from above, Stalin moved
to bring every element of society under coercive state regimentation and control.
He re-enacted the "binding" of all strata in servitude to the state authority. The
outstanding single manifestation of this totalitarianizing process was the terror-
istic collectivization of the peasantry and the reimposition of serfdom within the
framework of the kolkhoz. Here the state acted quite literally in the role of
conqueror of rural Russia. As Stalin observed to Churchill during World War II,
his conquest of the Russian peasantry was the hardest of all his campaigns, the
casualty list totalling ten millions. As before in Russian history, the totalitarian-
izing process was actuated in large part by the central authority's-overriding
concern for external defense and aggrandizement, which dictated a policy of direct
exploitation of the human resources of the economically backward country for
amassing military power through industrialization. Total exploitation necessitated
total control. There took place, therefore, an enormous hypertrophy of state
functions of command and control of society, an immense expansion of bureau-
cracy. One of Stalin's Bolshevik opponents, Bukharin, caught the historic impli-
cations of this whole pattern of policy when he labelled it "military-feudal exploi-
tation. "22 Russian history in the Stalin period retraced the course which
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Kliuchevsky epitomized in his phrase cited earlier: "The state swelled up; the
people grew lean."
Stalinism meant the resurgence of gosudarstvo not only in fact but also in
idea. The new Stalinist order became an order of statism in the fullest sense of
the word: gosudarstvo was its supreme symbol and object of glorification. Its
philosophy was succinctly summed up by Malenkov in a speech in 1941: "We are
all servants of the state. "23
Otherwise expressed, the motto read: "Place the
interests of the state above all else!" In the new conception, the whole of society
was regarded as a single great "interest group" identified with the goal of the un-
limited expansion of the power and glory of the Russian Soviet state. The old
Leninist Bolshevik idea of the party as popular Russia's authoritative organ of
consciousness and rule gave way, in practice if not entirely in theory, to the concept
of the party as the apostle and agent of the interests of the totalitarian state. One
of the probable sources of Stalin's murderous fury against the surviving Bolshevik
old guard, whom he exterminated wholesale in his blood purges of the 1930's, was
the ingrained inability of many of these men, schooled as they were in the
Weltanschauung of the revolutionary anti-state Russian intelligentsia, to see things
in the "state way" and assimilate fully the ideal, very new and very old, of the
"state-oriented man" (gosudarstennyi chelovek). As Russian Marxists of the Lenin
Bolshevik school, they could not easily adopt the historic Russian standpoint of
gosudarstvo. In exterminating them, Stalin saw himself as acting after the manner
of his chosen model, Ivan Grozny, who had undertaken, as it were, to liquidate
the boyars as a class; the Bolsheviks were Stalin's boyars. Using his N.K. V. D.
as Ivan had used his oprichnina, he broke the back of the party, eliminated it as a
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living political organism and ruling class, and refashioned it as a lever of the abso-
lute autocracy, the first of the mass organizations in the system of totalitarian
statism. Towards the end of his life he even expunged the word "Bolshevism" from
the official state vocabulary.
The change of regime from Bolshevism to Stalinist statism was registered
in various changes in the ideological system. The Marxist reading of Russian
history had to be condemned and radically revised in order to permit the official
glorification of gosudarstvo to be projected upon the Russian past. Stalin corrected
Marx and Engels?not to mention Lenin--on the embarrassing point about the de-
sirability of the earliest possible withering away of the state. Despite all this,
,
however, -he performed the phenomenal mental feat of continuing to regard himself
as a Marxist. How he did this is suggested by his papers of 1950 on Marxism and
linguistics, in which he frowned upon the notion of revolutionary "explosions" from
-
below and recommended as the good kind of revolutionary process the "revolution
from above" carried out "at the initiative of the existing regime. "24 Having identified
himself With the historic pattern of revolutionism from above, he mentally assimi-
lated Marxist revolutionism to this pattern. He thus became, in his own self-
image, a kind of Marxist Tsar. It was a standpoint from which he could see him-
25
self as the legitimate successor of both Ivan Grozny and Lenin. If Lenin fused
-
Marxism--with anti-state revolutionary populism, Stalin fused it with pro-state revo-
lutionary Tsarism. If the one mixed Marx with Chernyshevsky, the other mixed
Marx with Ivan Grozny.
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IV
The full implications of the recapitulation of the earlier Russian historical
process under Stalin emerged into clear view only in the final period of his reign,
the years following World War II. This was the heyday Of Stalinist statism, and
also the time when it became plain in innumerable ways that Stalinist statism meant
the resurrection of official Russia. This new official Russia found its visible in-
carnation in the huge hierarchy of officialdom, the privileged stratum of bureau-
cratic serving men, dressed many of them in uniforms similar to those of the old
chinovniki, and organized according to a new "table of ranks" which was analogous
in substance if not nomenclature to that which Peter created. This bureaucracy it-
self was the only approximation to a ruling class, but it was not really that; its
mission was to serve the goals, needs and whims of the absolute autocrat. It did,
however, consist (to use Lenin's phrase) of "privileged persons divorced from the
masses and standing above the masses. " The separation of this stratum from the
people was reflected in an image of the government which Stalin drew in 1945. In
a toast proposed at a victory banquet in the Kremlin, he spoke of the great mass
of "ordinary" people in Russia, the workers, peasants and lower employees who
held no ranks or titles, as "cogs in the wheels of the great State apparatus" and,
again, as "cogs who keep our great State machine going in all branches of science,
national economy and military affairs." "They are the people who support us, " he
,26
told the assembled dignitaries, "as the base supports the summit. ' The Iron
Tsar might have spoken in a similar vein.
This was the view from the summit looking down. What was the view from
the base looking upward? What picture did the millions of "cogs" form of the
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"great State machine?" Broadly speaking, the processes which had led to the
resurrection of official Russia had led also to the resurrection of popular Russia
as something separate from the official world. They had produced a revival of
the popular consciousness of the duality of Russia, of estrangement from gosudarstvo.
This is particularly the case if we consider the situation as it stood at the climax
of Stalin's reign, the years from 1945 to 1953, when the people discovered that the
hopes for liberalization which the regime had covertly encouraged during the war
years were not to be fulfilled, and that life in Russia, far from becoming more
tolerable, was in fact much less so than in the period before 1941. By now the
"great State machine" had become, in the minds of millions of ordinary Russians,
a great alien "It" which commanded their fear or even their awe but did not inspire
any affection or sense of identification. When one spoke to them in private, one
found that they referred to the government as "Oni"--"They." Very many of them
spiritually seceded from the life of the Russian state, inwardly "emigrated." They
felt themselves in it but not of it. It was an attitude of resignation rather than
rebelliousness. The state was seen as an alien oppressive force, but as a force
in firm control, a force to which the individual must adapt himself somehow while
hoping secretly for change. The popular mind dimly sensed that this hope was
bound up with the death of the autocrat. This thought was reflected in an anecdote
which circulated in Russia in 1947. It concerned a citizen who, in a letter to a
relative in America, remarked: "He is getting old now. I wonder when he will
die." The-censor marked this passage and forwarded the letter to the secret
police, to whose offices the citizen was summoned. A police officer asked him:
"Whom were you thinking of when you wrote that passage?" "Churchill," replied
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the citizen after a moment's deliberation. He was then excused, but as he departed
he turifed and asked the officer: "And whom were you thinking of?" The impli-
cation,_of course, was that the death of Stalin was secretly on everybody's mind
in Russia, from bottom to top.
.The revival of the consciousness of the state as an alien power was governed
by the basic facts of the historical situation: the invasion of the land by the state,
the mercilessly exploitative relation of the state to the people, the politicalizing
and regimentation of all public pursuits, the punitive attitude of the central au-
thority toward those guilty of any infraction of its impossible rules, the presence
of a bureaucratic officialdom whose behavior was increasingly characterized by a
soulless formalism, a worship of red tape, a servility to superiors and arrogance
to inferiors, and so on. The fact that the new bureaucracy had largely been re-
cruited from the common people made no essential difference. To the ordinary
person, the "great State machine" was a force which was constantly mobilizing
him, calling upon him for fresh sacrifices, taking all and giving nothing, breaking
its promises to him, lecturing, scolding and indoctrinating him, constricting his
choice of occupation, his ability to employ his talents profitably and productively,
his opportunity to travel and move around, his freedom to speak his mind above a
whisper. It was a force whose bureaucratic organs were callous to his concerns,
whose institutions had become "bureaucratic fortresses," to use Dudintsev's
phrase, whose system of administration forced one to bribe his way through life,
whose press and radio were a mass of boring harangues, whose economic policies
compelled a rich country to live miserably, whose secret agents were everywhere
in society, listening to hear what he might say in an unguarded moment. This,
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roughly, was the Stalinist Russian state as experienced by millions of its subjects
in the period from 1945 to 1953. It suggests why the idea of a thaw carried so
much meaning in the period just following Stalin's death, when the tension broke
and the atmosphere changed.
The press of official Russia propagated the image of the country as a mono-
lithic unity of state and people. It maintained the pretence that the people lived the
life of the state, that its goals and. interests and values were theirs too, that the
millions at the base were willing and eager cogs in the great machine. In effect,
it continued to propagate the myth of the revolution, according to which the new
state system was the political incarnation of popular Russia. At the same time,
it revealed in many indirect ways how far the monolithic picture was from the
truth. When Malenkov, for example, spoke at the nineteenth Party Congress in
1952 of the need for "Soviet Gogols and Shchedrins, " he implied, whether wittingly
or not, that there had arisen a new official Russia similar in basic ways to the one
which Gogol and Shchedrin had satirized. Again, internal propaganda constantly
complained that "some" citizens were attempting to get what they could from the
state and give as little as possible to it. This showed that the exploitative attitude
of the government toward the people was being reciprocated insofar as conditions
permitted, that the ordinary person had developed an opportunistic code of be-
havior in his relations with the governmental apparatus. Finally and most re-
vealingly, the leaders and their press began, approximately from 1946 onward,
to castigate regularly what was called apolitichnost' --the "apolitical attitude."
This went along with bezideinost' --the "non-ideological attitude." Taken together,
they signified a failure of response, an alienation from the official world, and a
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tendency among the people to live, as best they could, a life apart.
Russia had again become a dual entity. Despite the spread of literacy and
education-in the Soviet period, there was a revival of the cleavage of cultures in
the country. The culture of official Russia, with its apotheosized autocrat in the
Kremlin, its aristocracy of rank, its all-powerful bureaucracy, its pervasive
atmosphere of police terror, its regimentation of all activities, its rituals of pre-
varication, its grandiose "construction projects of communism," its great new
foreign em?pire, its official friendships and enmities, its cold and hot wars--this
was one tiling. There was also a suppressed and little known unofficial Russia
with a life of its own. In the late Stalin period, this was largely an underground
life. For very many, it meant a life of underground private enterprise in various
forms. For the peasant, it typically meant the effort to evade work on the state
fields and concentrate his concern on the family's private garden plot. For the
artist, thinker and writer, it often meant an underground creative life over which
the state had no control, an escape from the dreary official culture to real self-
expression in secret. Among some youthful elements, there was a revival of
evangelical religion, carried on in underground ways, and the old populist tradition
came alive again when university students at Moscow, Leningrad and elsewhere
formed secret circles to preach among themselves tendencies of oppositional
political thought with an anarchist tinge. Unofficial Russia also developed other
forms of expression, in which the life apart from the state was a life of crime or
centered iri the consolations of vodka.
_
This picture finds considerable confirmation in the works of post-Stalin
imaginative literature which have stirred up interest in Russia and abroad.
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Some of these writings are in fact representative of the underground literature of
the late Stalin period, and many of them are concerned with the life of the country
during that time. From Ehrenburg's Thaw and Pomerantsev's powerful tract
On Sincerity in Literature down to Dudintsev's Not By Bread Alone, the theme which
emerges is that of a duality in Russian life and consciousness, of division between
the official and unofficial Russias. Ehrenburg's hero is an underground artist who
severs himself completely from the official art world in order to be able to work
creatively. Dudintsev gives a portrait of the underground life of invention. His
hero does battle with the state bureaucracy, for which Dudintsev has created a
significant literary symbol in the figure of Drozdov, and goes to concentration
camp for his pains. The wide interested response which these writings have aroused
among the reading public in Russia is closely related to the fact that they raise, be-
tween as well as in the lines, the deeply meaningful question of the two Russias
and their relations.
One of the significant themes of this recent literature is that the line of
division between the two Russias may run through the individual person. The
image of dual Russia becomes here an image of the Russian functionary as a dual
personality. He has a role and self-identity in official Russia, but also a hidden
unofficial existence and identity. He is two persons in one man," as a character
of Dudintsev's expresses it. There are "two sides--the hidden one and the visible
one. "28 Alexander Yanshin's story "The Levers, " published in the almanac
Literary Moscow for 1956, is constructed around this theme. It introduces us to
a group of persons conversing informally in a room of the administration building
of a collective farm. Out of their quiet uninhibited talk unfolds a picture of the
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farm as an utterly run-down institution where the peasants earn only a mere pit-
tance, where there are no more cows, where the planning of crops remains a
jealously guarded prerogative of district officials, etc. They comment acidly about
the district party boss who, while knowing all this, pretends that it is not so and
repeats catch-phrases about "animal husbandry growing from year to year," the
steady upsurge of the peasants' "welfare," and so on. Then, suddenly, a meeting
is called to order, and it transpires that this group of persons composes the
collective farm's party organization. A metamorphosis of personality occurs:
"Their faces all became concentrated, tense and dull, as though they were pre-
paring for something which was long familiar to them but nevertheless ceremonial
and important. Everything earthly and natural vanished, and the action shifted to
another wo-rld...." The action has shifted to the world of official Russia. The
individuals have changed selves. Now they are acting and speaking in the capacity
of representatives of official Russia, its "levers" in the countryside. They proceed
to repeat the official catch-phrases of the district party boss, those very phrases
which they have just been ridiculing. They pass the requisite official "resolution,"
and the meeting ends. The question arises: Who are these people really? Yanshin
leaves us in no doubt that the real selves are the unofficial ones: "They quickly ?
departed, and it seemed that each had in his soul a sense of duty done, but at the
same time of uneasiness, of dissatisfaction with himself. "29 In the tradition of
his predecessors in the Russian intelligentsia a century ago, Yanshin feels the
existence?Of a rift between the state and society, between official and popular
Russia, and takes his moral stand with the latter. As might be expected, the of-
ficial press has denounced this point of view. It strikes at the heart of the myth
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of the Soviet regime as the political incarnation of popular Russia.
The death of Stalin, like the death of Nicholas I a century earlier, brought
a whole period of history to an end and posed the problem of internal change and
reform. In both instances, the autocratic system revolved around the autocratic
personality, and the situation toward the end of the reign assumed the aspect of a
profound national crisis, a crisis of paralysis and compulsion. Pent up forces for
change and reform were released in the aftermath. At the present time, however,
five years after Stalin's death, the limits of the official conception of reform have
become abundantly clear. The regime would not go forward to 1861 but back to
-
about 1930. The reform idea with which it has been operating under the leadership
of Khrushchev does not envisage the new period as one of a new "unbinding" of
society; it would unbind, at most, the provincial party secretaries. It sees the
solution in terms of reorganizational schemes, the decentralization of the bureau-
cracy, the. restorgion of party rule, the relaxation of police terror. It attacks
the agrarian crisis by the cultivation of virgin lands and corn rather than by the
abolition of serfdom in the kolkhoz. More recently, in the person of Khrushchev,
it has been emphasizing material things, adumbrating, as the new formula for
"communism," the Soviets plus supermarkets. The regime, it would appear, looks
to a rise in the material standard of consumption as a means of reconciling the
Russian people to unfreedom in perpetuity.
-
But it-is very doubtful that a policy of reform operating within these narrow
limits can repair the rupture between the state and society which is reflected in
_
the revival of the image of dual Russia. A moral renovation of the national life,
a fundamental reordering of relations, a process of genuine "unbinding," or in
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other words an alteration in the nature of the system, would be needed. The state
cannot resolve the situation satisfactorily so long as it clings to the positions won
in its re-conquest of the Russian land, just as it cannot work out firm relations
with the peoples of Eastern Europe so long as it holds on to the structure and idea
of empire. But of reforms on this major scale the present leadership appears to
be, for various reasons, incapable. So it goes on attempting to square the circle,
to make the system function well by merely tinkering with it rather than by funda-
mentally altering it. This is the dilemma of Russia today.
In 1857, when the post-Nicholaean reform period was still in the incipient
stage, Herzen wrote in his paper Kolokol: "The government corrects this or that
particular situation, but the principle, the idea out of which all our radical abuses
spring, remains untouched.... It is still the same old Nicholaean period, but
diluted with molasses. "30
There is reason to believe that large numbers of
people in contemporary Soviet Russia view the situation in a manner rather simi-
lar to this. They will not be satisfied with a Stalin period diluted with molasses.
If, as has been suggested, there is a "silence" in Russian culture today, it is in
part an enforced silence, and in part the pregnant silence of intensive thought in
the face of this problem.
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FOOTNOTES TO TUCKER
1. L. Barrive, Osvoboditel'noe dvizhenie v tsarstvovanie Aleksandra Vtorogo.
Istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow, 1909), p. 11.
2. P. N. Miliukov, Russia Today and Tomorrow (New York, 1922), p. 10.
3. P. N. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii Russkoi kul'tury(St. Petersburg, 1904),
I, p. 206.
4. V. 0. Kliuchevsky, Kurs Russkoi istorii (Moscow, 1937), III, p. 11.
5. A. I.---Herzen, Izbrannie filosofskie proizvedeniia (Moscow, 1946), II, p. 253.
6. A. I. Herzen, Dvizhenie obshchestvennoi mysli v Rossii (Moscow, 1907), p.
181. -
7. Donald MacKenzie Wallace, Russia (London, 1912), p. 379; italics added.
8. Michael Karpovich, "Russia's Revolution in Focus", The New Leader,
(November 4, 1957), p. 15; italics added.
9. Quoted by S. G. Pushkarev, Rossiia v XIX veke (New York, 1956), p. 379.
10. Herzen, Dvizhenie obshchestvennoi mysli v Rossii, p. 170.
11. N. L. Brodsky, (ed.), Rannie slavianofily (Moscow, 1910), pp. 72, 80, 86;
The Slavophile aversion to the idea of the state was a powerful contribution
to the development of anarchist thought in Russia. The Slavophile doctrine
was a quietistic anarchism. It accepted the state as a necessary evil. But
it was in no doubt about the evilness of it. Aksakov said: "The state is evil
in principle; the lie is not in this or that form of the state, but in the state
itself as an idea or principle; it is not a question of which form is better and
which worse, which true and which false, but of the fact that the state qua
state is a lie." Mikhail Bakunin, who was to become the leading philosopher
of revolutionary anarchism, highly commended Aksakov for this view.
12. Ibid. , p. 89.
13. Ibid. , pp. 98-99.
14. Herzen, Dvizhenie obshchestvennoi mysli v Rossii, p. 137.
15. Quoted by Alexander Kornilov, Modern Russian History (New York, 1943),
II, p. 208.
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16. Miliukov, Russia Today and-Tomorrow, p. 11.
Footnotes to Tucker
?
17. Wallace, Russia, pp. 368-69, has this to say on the matter of classes and
class conflict in Russian history: "Certain social groups were, indeed,
formed in the course of time but they were never allowed to fight out their
own battles. The irrestible Autocratic Power kept them always in check
and fashioned them into whatever form it thought proper, defining minutely
and carefully their obligations, their rights, their mutual relations, and
their respective positions in the political organization. Hence we find in
the history of Russia almost no trace of those class hatreds which appear
so conspicuously in the history of Western Europe. "
18. R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik, Istoriya russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli (St.
Petersburg, 1914), II, p. 109.
19. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works (Moscow, 1947), II, pp. 181, 221.
20. Speaking of Chernyshevsky and likeminded Russian revolutionists of the
sixties, Wallace writes in Russia, p. 616: "Their heated imagination showed
them in the near future a New Russia, composed of independent federated
Communes, without any bureaucracy or any central power--a happy land in
which everybody virtuously and automatically fulfilled his public and private
duties, and in which the policemen and all other embodiments of material
constraint were wholly superfluous." This rather accurately sums up Lenin's
image of a future "communist society."
21. Quoted by Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (London, 1949), p. 104.
22. Kommunisticheskaia partiia v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s"ezdov, konferentsii
i plenumov Ts. K. (Moscow, 1954), II, p. 555.
23. G. M. Malenkov, 0 zadachakh partiinykh organizatsii v oblasti promyshlen-
nosti'i transporta (Moscow, 1941), p. 39.
24. Pravda, June 20, 1950.
25. This thought was certainly in his mind. For instance, in 1947 he commented
privately that of all the leaders in Russian history, Ivan and Lenin were the
only two who had introduced a state monopoly of foreign trade. (See S. M.
Dubrovsky, "Protiv idealizatsii deyatel'nosti Ivana IV", Voprosy istorii,
No. 8 (1956), p. 128.)
26. Pravda, June 27, 1945.
27. A young painter with whom I spoke in Russia in 1946 said: "All the good
work in the arts here is being done underground." Once in a great while,
some hint-of this situation penetrated the press. For example, during the
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Footnotes to Tucker
so-called "philosophical discussion" of 1947 one speaker referred to the
"dualization" of philosophy. It resulted from the fact, he said, that the
philosophical bureaucrats were afraid to clear for publication any article
or book containing a trace of originality. As a consequence of their
"protectionism" and "mystical fear of mistakes," there had come into
existence a "second" and "hidden" social science and philosophy in Russia:
"There exists a manuscript and typescript literature on philosophy and the
history of philosophy which is richer, fuller and deeper than the one we know.
Voprosy filosofii, No. 1 (1947), pp. 375, 376, 377.
28. Vladimir Dudintsev, Ne khlebom edinym (New York, 1957), p. 196.
29. M. E. Aliger, (ed.), Literaturno-khudozhestvennyi sbornik II. (Moscow,
1956), pp. 510, 513.
30. Nestor Kotliarevsky, Kanun osvobozhdeniia. 1855-1861 (Petrograd, 1916),
p. 127.
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If
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STAT
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RUSSIAN ETHNIC VALUES
by
John S. Reshetar, Jr.
This attempt to identify Russian and Soviet ethnic values as they have
developed and become modified in the course of nearly a century is based on an
analysis of. various beliefs and reasoned convictions regarding the Russians and
expressed by representative members of that ethnic group. It is an essay in de-
fining the self-image of the Russian in terms of popularly held or consequential
views regarding common virtues and vices which have served to distinguish the
Russians, in their own eyes, from other ethnic groups. It must include, at least
implicitly, some consideration of the reasons why various Russians have expressed
intense self-love and pride when speaking of their own kind and have also, on
occasion, indicated contrary views. Any such effort is obviously fraught with
difficulties since any composite ethnic self-portrait necessarily reflects much
ambivalence and a certain number of apparent contradictory characteristics.
In a _sense it is even incorrect to speak of many ethnic values common to
all classes,- and this is particularly true of the post-Emancipation Russia of
Alexander II in which the gaps between landowners, intellectuals, the merchant
class and the peasantry were very marked and significant. Since the peasantry
constituted...the overwhelming mass of the population--more than 40, 000, 000 were
emancipated from serfdom in February, 1861--the proverbs of the period con-
stitute an important source for popular attitudes and ethnic values.
They indicate a strong sense of attachment to the native land: "The native
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country is a mother, the alien land a stepmother" (rodimaia storona?mat',
chuzhaia machikha); "Sweet is the land in which one's umbilicus is cut" (Mila ta
storon.a-gde pupok rezan); "One's own sorrow is dearer than alien joy" (Svoia
pechal' chuzhoi radosti dorozhe); "Praise what is beyond the seas but sit home"
(Khvali zamo 1r'e, a sidi doma). However, this sense of attachment is tempered
by other proverbs: "Great is the Holy Russian land, and there is no room for
truth" (Velika Sviatorusskaia zemlia, a pravde nigde net mesta); "The Russian
people are a stupid people" (Rus ski narod--glupy narod); "In Russia, thank God,
there is a hundred-year supply of fools" (Na Rusi, slava Bogu, durakov let na sto
pripaseno). 2There is also a rather definite awareness of sin, guilt and temptation:
"Only God is without sin" (Odin Bog bez grekha); "Who is not sinful before God,
who is not his grandmother's grandson?" (Kto Bogu ne greshen, kto babke ne
vnuk?); "It is a sin to steal but how to avoid it?" (Grekh vorovat' --da nel'zia
3
minovat').
The quality of patience and a recognition of fate are also evident in the
proverbs of the 1860's: "Our happiness is water in a net" (Nashe shchast'e--voda
v bredne); "Misfortune comes in poods 40-pound weighs, fortune comes in
zolotniks Le 96th part of a Russian poung" (Nedolia pudami, dolia zolotnikami);
"This pineapple is not for us" (Etot ananas ne dlia nas); "Don't argue with mis-
fortune--suffer" (S bedoi ne perekoriaisia, terpi). This sense of resignation and
suffering is combined with a high degree of resourcefulness based upon practical
worldly wisdom, suspicion and caution. These characteristics have found ex-
pression in the following proverbs: "Pray to God and don't anger the devil" (Bogu
molis', a chorta ne gnevi); "Politics is a rotten egg" (Politika?tukhloe iaitso)
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i.e., avoid accidents so as not to break it; "The more friends, the more enemies.
Fear your friend as you would an enemy" (Bolishe druzei, bolishe i vragov. Boisia
druga, kak vraga); "Be friendly with the bear, but hang on to your ax" (S-medvedem
5
druzhis', a za topor derzhist). The Russian predilection for bluntness and for
mutually exclusive extremes is seen in the expression "to receive someone in a
Russian manner, i.e. , either frankly and coarsely or with bread and salt," the
traditional symbols of hospitality. 6
The picture of Russian values as derived from these popular expressions of
the period of Emancipation is reinforced in part by the decision to grant title to the
land to the peasant communes rather than to the individual peasants. The commune
was held responsible for the payment of taxes and redemption payments (in return
for land received), and this served as a reflection of group responsibility for the
individual. Yet the Emancipation was an important initial step in the protracted
process of breaking down barriers between classes and in transforming the nation
into a more homogeneous mass as a result of its leavening effect. Thus the first
step was taken-to qualify Lermontov's apt reference to "unwashed Russia, land of
slaves and land of lords." The 1860's also saw the beginning of the advent of a
sense of self-respect on the part of the peasantry. At the same time it facilitated
the beginning cif mass patriotism which made itself felt at the time of the suppression
of the Polish revolt of 1863. When the European powers, who had entered into an
alliance against Russia in the Crimean War, threatened to intervene on Poland's
behalf, patriotic feeling common to all classes manifested itself.
The introduction of universal military service on January 1, 1874, made
all classes equally subject to service for a term of six years, for men aged twenty,
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as compared with the previous 25?year term. However, the more education one
had the shorter was his period of service: university graduates served only six
months and persons with secondary education served two years. Thus the peasant
served the full six-year term unless he had a primary education in which case he
served four-years. When War Minister D. A. Miliutin introduced literary courses
for conscripts in 1875, recruits could return home able to read and write. In
addition, the army became a vehicle for propagating patriotic feelings among the
masses.
Patriotic sentiment found expression in Nikolai S. Leskov's amusing tale
Levsha- (1881) which deals with the exploits of a left-handed, cross-eyed Tula.
craftsman. The tale commences with a visit of Alexander I to England following the
Congress of Vienna. Leskov has the Western-oriented Emperor accompanied by a
Don Cossack, Platov, who in contrast to the ruler's respect for English achieve-
ments always states that Russia has the equivalent. Alexander takes Platov to a
British museum and tells him that what he will see there will cause him to cease
"disputing that' we, Russians, with our imporance are good for nothing. "7 How-
ever, when various gadgets and inventions are exhibited Platov persists in his
opinion that it all matters little and notes that his Don Cossacks were able to wage
war without these articles and had repelled "twelve tongues," i. e. , nations. Upon
conclusion of the visit, following various outbursts of national pride on Platov's
part which embarrassed Alexander, the British gave the Emperor a microscopic
steel flea which would jump and dance upon being wound with a small key.
Alexander, according to the tale, was enchanted by this achievement and told the
English: "YOU are the leading craftsmen in the world and my people, in comparison,
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are capable of nothing. "8 The steel flea was taken to Russia, and when Alexander
I ceased to be Emperor it became the property of Nicholas I.
The new Emperor was unable to make much of the microscopic flea until
Platov recounted to him the story of how it was acquired on the visit to England.
Platov ventured to suggest that the Russian craftsmen of Tula be consulted in an
effort to surpass the English in this matter. The nationalistic Emperor readily
agreed and commissioned Platov to look after the work. The steel flea was left at
Tula and in two weeks Platov returned it to the capital. The picture which Leskov
paints of the Tula craftsmen is of a very resourceful breed. When the flea is ex-
amined by the Emperor he is told to note the legs closely, and it becomes apparent
that the Tula craftsmen succeeded in shoeing the steel flea with steel horseshoes
made to scale. In addition, each shoe bore the name of the craftsman who had
made it, and the cross-eyed, left-handed craftsman, when questioned, stated that
this work had been carried on without the benefit of a microscope.
Nicholas I kissed the left-handed craftsman and sent him to London. The
British were duly impressed by this Russian feat with the flea but pointed out to
the Russian "craftsman that if the Russians had had some knowledge of arithmetic
they would have known that a shod steel flea would no longer be able to dance since
the shoes would upset the precisely calculated balance. The craftsman from Tula
did not dispute this and declared that "we are not very advanced in sciences but
are only faithfully devoted to out fatherland. "9 He declined the invitation to remain
in England and take a wife there and in doing so made an invidious comparison be-
tween the Anglican and Orthodox faiths by stating that the latter had miraculous
icons, sacred relics and many additional holy days. The left-handed craftsman
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was particularly interested in the muzzles of English weapons and noted that they
were not cleaned in the Russian manner and that the bore remained undamaged.
On the return journey to Russia the cross-eyed craftsman from Tula be-
came very sea-sick and drank excessively as a result of a wager made with an
Englishman. Upon arriving in St. Petersburg the Englishman was taken to his
embassy and recovered while the craftsman, having arrived in his native land after
enhancing its reputation abroad, was cast about from one hospital to another since
his documents were not in order. His last act before expiring was to request that
the Emperor be informed of the English method of cleaning arms since in the event
of war Russian weapons could not be fired with accuracy if the old method were
continued. The physician conveyed this information to a responsible official who
shouted at him and declared that it was none of his business and that there were
generals in Russia responsible for such matters. The barrels of the weapons con-
tinued to be cleaned in the old manner and firing allegedly became inaccurate.
Leskov 'noted that if the craftsman's words had reached the Emperor the Crimean
War might have taken an altogether different turn.
Thus the Russian hero and patriot went unrewarded in his homeland.
Inertia held sway although the vain Emperor had found momentary satisfaction in
the fact that the Russians had presumably outdone the English. This tale has re-
mained popular in Soviet Russia and the fact of the shod flea is unforgettable. It
is significara that Nikita S. Khrushchev, in an interview granted to William
Randolph Hearst, Jr. in November of 1957, cited Leskov's steel flea in connection
with an assertion that Soviet methods and achievements are superior to those of
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foreign lands. However, the analogy was not an entirely appropriate one since
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Khrushchev omitted the remainder of Leskov's tale bearing on the lack of appreci-
ation of the Tula craftsman and the failure to heed his warning.
The ironic contradictoriness of so much of Russian life is a theme which
has been-expressed in many ways. Pride and shame, arrogance and professions
of humility, sensitivity and coarseness are all present. This is well illustrated in
Nekrasoir's poem Who Is Happy in Russia which was written in the seventies and
makes it clear that there is little happiness in the country. The peasant is "working
himself to death and half-killing himself with drink." Nekrasov refers to the words
"scratched" on Mother Russia "as the stigma on the criminal, as the brand on the
horse:" Na vynos i raspivochno (For consumption off and on the premises)11--a
reference to the all too prominent role of the tavern in Russian life. Yet the peasant
in Nekrasov's poem is also tough and in one instance is likened to the bogatyr',
the enduring and valliant hero of Russian folklore. The lot of women is not easy,
and Nekrasov depicts the unhappy daughter-in-law who is oppressed by her
husband's- hard-bitten parents with whom she must live. The popular attitude to-
ward the clergy is also depicted in terms of the peasant's fear of meeting the priest
on the street and the "jesting tales and indecent songs and every kind of obloquy"12
uttered at the priest's expense.
Thus it is a mixed picture of the Russians which Nekrasov presented in
this most famous poem. At the end, the brief verses entitled Rus' contain the
oft-quoted: "Thou art wretched, Thou art bountiful, Thou art mighty, Thou art
impotent, Mother Russia! "13 Yet Nekrasov saw the Russian heart of gold as having
been saved by slavery and the people empowered by their "tranquil conscience and
living truth!" Sacrifice of the kind made by the Russians is not elicited by falsehood,
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according to Nekrasov, and a concealed spark has been kindled within Russia.
"An innumerable armed host arises, An invincible force becomes manifest! Thou
art miserable, Thou art bountiful, Thou art downtrodden, Thou art omnipotent,
Mother Russia! ,,l4
The juxtaposition of this note of triumphant confidence in Russia's future
along with much that does not corroborate it serves to underline a fundamental
split in the Russian self-image. Numerous vices are conceded, and at the same
time the Russians are said to be the possessors of Truth. This is a theme which
probably finds its fullest expression in Dostoevsky and will be returned to later.
Populism, the favorite Russian doctrine of the seventies, was based upon
the assumption that Russia's salvation lay in the people (narod), actually the
peasantry, which supposedly embodied all virtues and was the salt of the earth.
Such a Creed facilitated the further development of Russian nationalism, but it
could only lead to disillusionment with respect to the peasantry as a result of the
ill-fated effort on the part of the young intellectuals to go "to the people." Many
of these crusaders, who desired to enlighten and aid "the people," had studied
abroad under the influence of the Populist leader, Peter Lavrov. These youths,
so far removed from the peasant masses, had their illusions shattered when they
received a cold reception and were often even arrested in the rural areas into
which they had gone under the guise of teachers, medical workers, mid-wives,
nurses and even as ordinary laborers.
The failure of Populism was accompanied not only by disillusionment with
the peasantry but also with the results of the Emancipation. Few writers, if any,
reflected this reaction as well as did Gleb Uspensky. In The Power of the Soil
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(1882) Uspensky describes the fate of a former serf, Ivan Petrov (Bosykh), em-
ployed as a railroad worker. He has become a chronic drunkard and cardplayer,
squandering his earnings and only occasionally experiencing remorse. When asked
how this had come about, he attributes it to the fact of freedom (voila) and willful-
ness (svoevol' stvo). 15Thus money, leisure, freedom are viewed as leading not
to a better life but to personal disintegration and corruption. The great error,
according to Uspensky, was to have torn the peasant from the land and made it im-
possible for him to remain a peasant. Left to his own resources, he had to make
his way in a changing- Russian world.
The portent of this world was the subject of much of Dostoevsky's thought.
Dostoevsky was convinced of the superiority of the Russian over the European.
He saw in the Russian character an instinctive ability to reconcile everything and
to become exponents of human universality (obshchechelovechnost'). He saw in the
Russian none of the "European stiffness, imperviousness, lack of condescension. It
According to Dostoevsky, the Russian "gets along with everyone and adjusts to
everything" since he "sympathizes with everything human irrespective of nation-
ality, blood and soil. " At the same time the Russian is supposedly capable of "the
most healthy self-criticism, the most sober view of himself, and the absence of
any self-exaltation harmful to freedom of action. " He is said to be able "to speak
all languages and master the spirit of every foreign tongue in all subtleties as if
it were his own Russian tongue--something which is not to be found in the
European peoples.... "16
However, there is another side to Dostoevsky's characterization of the
Russians: He saw in them a propensity to lie, and in his Diary of a Writer he
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posed the question: "Why does everyone in Russia lie and without exception?"
Dostoevsky hastened to point out that the overwhelming majority of Russians "lie
out of Fospitality" and that whereas in other countries lies are uttered by scoundrels
for criminal purposes, in Russia it is done "for the purpose of creating an aesthetic
impression upon the hearer. "17
This is done by means of exaggeration. The
Russians "fear the truth, i. e., we do not fear it, if you wish, but constantly regard
the truth as something far too tedious and prosaic, insufficiently poetic, too
commonplace, and in this way, by constantly avoiding it, we finally made it one of
the most unusual and rare things in our Russian world. "18
Thus in Russia, ac-
cording to Dostoevsky, "the truth almost always has an entirely fantastic character. "19
Implied in the commonplace nature of lying in Russia, said Dostoevsky, was the
shame which Russians have felt for themselves along with their need to "adopt an
entirely different visage."
For Dostoevsky, the notion of shared guilt is a peculiarly Russian belief
as a result of which crime has been equated with misfortune:
No, the people do not deny crime and know that the
criminal is guilty. The people know that they are
also guilty along with each criminal. But, in
accusing themselves, they also prove that they do
not believe in environment (sreda); they believe in
the opposite, that the environment depends com-
pletely upon them, upon their uninterrupted re-
pentance and self-perfection. 20
Related to this is Dostoevsky's belief that the "most fundamental spiritual need of
the Russian people is the need for suffering, perpetual and insatiable, everywhere
_
and in everything." He saw the Russians as being dominated by the "stream of
suffering" throughout their history not merely as a result of "external misfortunes
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and disasters but 5ecaus7 it wells up from the popular heart itself. 1121
Thus
Dostoevsky saw the Russian as experiencing suffering even when he is happy:
"otherwise his happiness is not complete." Even the Russian drunkard suffers, ac-
cording to Dostoevsky. In contrasting the Russian drunkard with his German counter-
part, Dostoevsky noted that the German is more amusing, happier and. proud of
himself and does not cry while "the Russian drunkard loves to drink from grief and
cry. "22
No one was seemingly more aware of the Russian's shortcomings than was
Dostoevsky. In his Diary of a Writer for May, 1876, he noted that "the Russian
man in the past decades has strongly yielded to the corruption of acquisitiveness,
cynicism, materialism" while the Russian woman he saw as remaining faithful to
ideas, manifesting great "seriousness, patience and setting an example of the
greatest courage. "23
This view was undoubtedly related to the successful struggle
for higher education for women which was being waged in Russia at that time. In
February of the same year Dostoevsky observed that "due to the circumstances of
almost all of Russian history" the Russians had given themselves to corruption
and debauchery (razvrat) and that it was remarkable that they had succeeded in
retaining the human manner and form. He asked that the Russian be judged "not
by those abominations which he so often commits but by those great and sacred
things:for which he constantly sighs even in his loathsomeness. "24
- Thus the Russian has a proclivity to manifest contradictory tendencies and
to change rapidly. Dostoevsky saw the best of persons suddenly becoming a loath-
some evil doer and a criminal "if he but falls into that whirlwind, that fateful
circular motion of convulsive and sudden self-renunciation and self-destruction. "25
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Conversely, the Russian is supposedly incapable of protracted and serious hatred
"not only of people but of vices, the darkness of ignorance, despotism, obscurant-
ism and all of these other retrogressive things. "26 Dostoevsky thus made more
understandable the old Russian proverb: "Reprove sin but make peace with the
27
sinner" - (S grekhom branis', a s greshnikom mirisl). The forbearance of the
Rusgian supposedly makes him incapable of sustained hatred, and this is certainly
at the basis of Dostoevsky's notion that the Russian is the bearer of the doctrine of
human universality (obshchechelovechnost'). Yet this is also the Russian's source
of tragic weakness since he is incapable of sustained hatred of various vices and of
despotism.
Dostoevsky, in stressing the forbearance of the Russians, contended that
they were a great people, a Truth-bearing people capable of embracing other
peoples and passionately wanting to do this. The goal of obshchechelovechnost'
Dostoevsky defined in terms of the collapse, at some time "in the light of wisdom
and consciousness," of the "natural barriers and prejudices" which up to now have
-
divided nations. Only then will "peoples live under the same spirit and order as
brothers, sensibly and lovingly striving for general harmony. ,,28 For Dostoevsky,
the achievement of this "Russian national idea of obshchechelovechnost" required
that Russians, first of all, be themselves:
To become a Russian means to cease despising one's
own people. As soon as the European sees that we
have commenced to respect our people and our nation-
ality he will immediately commence to respect us.
And, truly, the stronger and more independent the
development of our national spirit the stronger and
closer would be our response to the European soul,
and having become related to it, we would become
more understandable to it.... Having become
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ourselves, we will at last acquire the human
countenance in place of that of the 5 mitativg
ape. 29
In asking the Russians not to imitate Europe Dostoevsky also expressed_his view
that to the Russian-Europe was a "second fatherland" being almost as dear to him
as Russia itself: "In it g uropg is the Japhetic tribe, and our idea--is the unity
of all nations of this tribe and even more, much more, ffhos s7 of Shem and Ham. "30
It is ironic that, in a sense, the Soviet regime can be said to have adopted
Dostoevskyis goal in terms of what it has expected from the Russian people even
though he and Lenin commenced from entirely different premises. Both men lived
abroad and were not very happy in Western Europe. While Lenin was not the
chauvinist that Dostoevsky was, they both had great faith in Russia. Although both
men were aware of the shortcomings of the Russians each preferred to concentrate
on the great potential of his people: Dostoevsky seeing them as a Truth-bearing
people and Lenin hoping that they would embrace socialism.
However, Lenin had certain reservations regarding Russia's abilities--
at least until her ruling class were replaced by his Bolshevik Social Democratic
movement. He frequently drew invidious comparisons between Russia and Europe
as when he noted that "such a savage (dikaia) country in which the mass of people
are pillaged in terms of education, enlightenment and knowledge--not a single
such country remains in Europe other than Russia. "31
In an article published in
the July 18 (31), 1913 issue of Rabochaia Pravda he praised the newly-opened New
York Public Library as well as its many branches and contrasted it with what
little was being done in Russia for "popular education. "32 In a letter written to
his sister-bn April 22, 1914 from Cracow, Lenin noted that "here, of course, one
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cannot even speak of culture; it is almost like Russia.... "33 Lenin was most
critical of the dominant role of the Russians in the Russian Empire even though
they constituted only 43 per cent of its population. Writing in the summer and.
autumn of 1913 and in the spring of 1914, Lenin repeated this statistic on a number
34
of occasions. Declaring war on the "ruling- Black Hundreds and bourgeois national
culture'of the Great Russians, " Lenin preached a doctrine of internationalism which
the Soviet regime was to make some attempt to effect.
Although he denounced his own people as oppressors of other nationalities,
Lenin remained a Russian at heart. Krupskaya has recounted writing the following
to Lenin's mother rega.:.ding his homesickness in Cracow: "And he Llenin7 is a
terrible nationalist. He would not go to see the works of Polish painters for any-
thing. But one day he picked up a catalogue of the Tretyakov Galleries at the home
of one of our friends and frequently becomes absorbed in it. "35
On the issue of the
privileged position of the Russian language, Lenin in January of 1914 took the
position.-that it was a language which did not need to be "learned under a stick. "
He expressed the view that all non-Russians within Russia should be able to learn
Russian of their own volition and would do so since "hundreds of thousands of people
are moving from one end of Russia to the other" and the "growth of capitalism...
leads to the drawing together of all nations." Declaring the "language of Turgeniev,
Tolstoy, Doboliubov and Chernyshevsky bs7 great and strong, "36 Lenin ex-
pressed his confidence in its ability to triumph without enjoying the privileged
status of being the exclusive official language of the Russian Empire.
At the end of 1914 Lenin further developed his views on the Russian people
and their goals. In his article "On the National Pride of the Great Russians," he
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denied that the "Russian conscious proletarian" was devoid of this sentiment. As
proof he quoted Chernyshevsky's words of commiseration--"a sorrowful nation,
a nation of slaves, from top to bottom"--and indicated that now a "revolutionary
class" had arisen in Russia:
We are full of the feeling of national pride and precisely
because we especially hate our slavish past (when the
landowning nobles led the peasants to war for the purpose
of stifling the freedom of Hungary, Poland, Persia and
China) and our present slavery when these same land-
owners, aided by the capitalists, lead us to war in order
to stifle Poland and Ukraine, in order to smash the
democratic movement in Persia and in China.... "37
Thus Lenin had mixed feelings regarding his own people: on the one hand, he was
too well aware of their past, their propensity for despotism, their expansionism,
their backwardness; on the other hand, he desperately hoped that they could over-
come this past and contribute significantly to an international socialist movement
which had been born and centered in Western Europe.
And-go it came to pass that what had been considered unlikely actually
occurred, and Russia made "socialism" her monopoly just as she had accepted
Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and then at the time of the reforms of
Patriarch Nikon claimed that her religious forms were superior to those of the
people from whomshe had originally received them. This process occurred in
Lenin's time yet, between 1918 and 1920. During the debate on a peace treaty with
the Cenfral,Powers at the Seventh Party Congress in March, 1918, Lenin declared
that the war_had given a "bitter, acutely painful but serious lesson to the Russian
people--to organize themselves, to discipline themselves, to subordinate them-
selves and create a discipline which would serve as a model. Learn from the
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German his discipline, otherwise we are a lost people and shall forever remain
in slavery. "38
Two years later, on April 23, 1920, Lenin utilized the occasion
of his fiftieth birthday to observe that Russia's position had changed and that after
having "received so much revolutionary initiative from the West, now, it may be,
fft.ussi.7 is itself prepared to serve as a source of revolutionary energy. "39
Something of this was foreseen by Alexander Blok when he wrote his macabre poem,
The Scythians, in January of 1918 following the Bolshevik seizure of power but
prior to the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. Calling upon the world
to take heed, Blok sang:
There are millions of you. There are great multitudes of us.
Try to engage us in combat!
Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asiatics
With slanted and craving eyes,
Russia is a Sphynx. Exulting and mourning,
And drenched in black blood,
She looks and peers into you,
With hatred and with love!....
We love the flesh, its flavor and its color',
- But also the suffocating and mortal odor of flesh.
Are we to be blamed if your skeleton cracks
In our heavy and tender paws ?4?
In playing the role of Truth-possessor, the Russians have undoubtedly
modified their self-image. In many ways, the Soviet regime, by assiduously and
cleverly cultivating Russian national consciousness, has made itself more accept-
able to the population, and the term Rossiia is today commonly employed by
?
Russians to_refer to the entire Soviet Union. Russian operas from the tsarist
period, such as Eugene Onegin, Boris God.unov, Prince Igor, A Life for the Tsar
(now renamed Ivan Susanin, after the principal role), enjoy the greatest popularity
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and, significantly, are on purely Russian themes. One has only to visit the Kremlin
museums, particularly the Oruzheinaia Palata, to appreciate the extent to which a
calculated preoccupation with Russia's past is both permitted and utilized. 41
The
Soviet regime is committed to the propagation of atheism, and yet it does not re-
move the gold-covered crosses from St. Basil's or from the numerous churches and
chapels within the Kremlin. It has converted the more prominent old monasteries
into national monuments and has permitted monastic communities to function in
certain of them.
Yet it would be incorrect to identify the Russians as a past-oriented people.
Actually an ambivalence persists since there is an identification with much of the
past along with the claim that the Russians have transcended this past in moving
along the road to "Communism. " Time and again the Soviet leaders have insisted
upon the need to look forward and to sacrifice for a great and limitless future.
Stalin indicated that it would go badly with the country if heavy industry were not
developed. On February 4, 1932, he quoted Nekrasav on Mother Ruska's wealth
and impotence without mentioning the poet by name. On that occasion he declared
that "Old Russia" was beaten "uninterruptedly for her backwardness" by the Mongol
khans, Turkish beys, Swedish feudal lords, the Polish-Lithuanian gentry, the
Anglo-French capitalists and Japanese barons--"for military backwardness, for
cultural backwardness, for political backwardness, for agricultural backwardness. "42
It can be said that in many ways this backwardness--particularly in the industrial
and technological spheres--has been overcome by the Soviet regime.
--
This-has involved a revision of the self-image in. several significant respects.
First of all, the regime has attempted to modify the popular attitude towards fate
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by preaching that man's ability to acquire knowledge is limitless, that man can
control his environment and determine his destiny. It has opposed the fatalism
and pessimism which were so much a part of the Russian past and of Russian
literature which Gorki characterized as the "most pessimistic literature of Europe."
Gorki had noted that:
with us all books are written on one and the same
theme, on our sufferings--in youth and at a mature
age: from lack of wisdom, from the yoke of auto-
cracy, from women, from love of dear ones, from
the unsuccessful ordering of the universe; in old age:
from consciousness of errors of life, lack of teeth,
indigestion, and from the necessity of dying. 43
Soviet literature has attempted to depict man as imbued with buoyant optimism and
capable of determining his own fate. The regime has endeavored to combat the
remnants of Oneginism, Oblomovism and the indecision and aimlessness of certain
of Chekhov's characters as well as the boredom and escapism of Lermontov's
Pechorin in A Hero of Our Times. 44 It has sought to root out any remnants of the
Aliosha Karamazov type, the waverer and truth-seeker, or the type of Prince
Myshkin, who cannot escape his fate. However, a curious inconsistency persists
in this matter because the Soviet regime itself has in many ways become the em-
bodiment of fate,, and its decisions must be acquiesced in with enthusiasm.
A new "religion" has made inroads on the traditional faith and the two
belief systems "co-exist" side by side. Atheism has been propagated with such
fervor that it has taken on certain of the attributes of faith. The traditional values
of the peasantry have suffered a decline as the Soviet Union has ceased to be an
C-
overwhelmingly peasant country. Greater emphasis upon technology and industrial
civilization has brought with it the curse of specialization and the doom of the man
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who comprehends the dimensions of his own world and its meaning. The stereo-
typed forms of an industrialized, "socialized" and urbanized society have been
adopted in large part.
However, one trait which has persisted despite the change in regimes is
the Russian capacity to assimilate aliens. The Italian architect, Francesco
Bartolomeo Rastrelli, General Barclay de Tolly (who was of Scottish descent), the
Germans Anton Delvig and Denis Fonvizin--all regarded as Russians--testify to
the effectiveness of this Russian quality. Pushkin's African ancestry did not pre-
vent him from becoming the greatest Russian poet. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal', of
Danish descent, ironically was Russia's first great lexicographer. The Swedish
background of the poet and novelist, Zinaida Gippius, the German origin of the
poet, Alexander Blok, and the Ukrainian-Polish ancestry of the writer, Vladimir
G. Korolenko, bear testimony to the willingness of the Russians to confer their
nationality upon non-Russians who acquire the language and demonstrate respect
.for Russia's cultural achievements and way of life. This assimilatory capacity
has, if anything, been enhanced under the 'Soviet regime, especially as a result of
its policy toward its non-Russian subjects.
A nominal but not ineffective Soviet "internationalism" has served as a
cover for the Russian self-image as expressed in an intense but not exclusive
nationalism. This Soviet Russian self-image stresses the vigor and the promise
of the "great Russian people" served by its "junior brothers" and by "progressives"
throughout the world. However, the self-exaltation has also been tempered by a
sense of guilt. It had played an important role in the Populist movement since
the conscious-stricken members of the intelligentsia who went "to the people" in
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the 1870's were motivated largely by guilt for the condition of the peasantry.
Guilt also manifested itself in the earlier period as a result of Russia's having
been regarded by many as a backward and flea-ridden country in comparison with
Western Europe. The sense of inferiority and inadequacy was also reflectedin
Russia's adherence to the Julian calendar with its thirteen-day differential in the
twentieth century; it made the Russians appear to be out of step with the rest of
the world, but at the same time it served to reinforce a sense of uniqueness and
the conviction of possessing true religious faith.
While the gap between the Soviet Union and the West has been narrowed by
the Soviet regime in many ways, the factor of guilt may still be present in the
Russian to?some extent although it is now probably not motivated by the inferiority
from which it resulted in the tsarist period. Yet a parallel of sorts may exist be-
tween Alexandrine Russia of the 1870's and 1880's and Soviet Russia to the extent
that in both periods there are observable similarities in the conditions which have
provoked at least a muffled defiance of the regime if not many instances of out-
right rebellion. Guilt has remained in the Soviet period as a result of the fear of
deviating fr-om the "truth" as expressed in the Communist Party line. This process
can commence with deviation in the form of unexpressed thought, which may never
be expressed verbally, but its role as a source of individual guilt feeling is none-
theless significant. At the same time the Soviet regime has dulled the edge of
much of the desire to challenge established authority by harnessing popular energy
in the fulfillment of grandiose construction projects and by attempting to grant the
more able elements in the society a greater stake in the system.
Since the Soviet regime has promised its subjects far greater rewards in
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this world than the tsarist government ever dared to promise it has also created a
climate somewhat conducive to individual disillusionment. The fate of great hopes
and expectations on the part of Russians in the past promoted a series of profound
disappointments some of which facilitated subsequent upheavals. To begin with, the
Emancipation proved to be something less than a panacea and was soon tarnished by
the burdensome redemption payments. Populism also failed to provide a solution
and led to disillusionment with the peasantry. The terrorism which emerged from
Populism in the late 1870's proved that it did not have the key to a better Russian
future in assassinating the Emperor. The humiliating Russo-Japanese War was
followed by the Revolution of 1905 which, in turn, led to a period of reaction and
further disappointment. Three and one half years of participation in World War I
only led to a civil war of three years' duration. The democratic experiment in the
Russia of 1917 proved itself a miserable failure. The relatively relaxed period of
the New Economic Policy in the twenties led to the costly period of collectivization
and industrialization. The establishment of "socialism" in the Soviet Union by
proclamation in 1936 was followed by mass arrests and purges on an unprecedented
scale. A brief breathing space was interrupted by the Soviet Union's participation
in World War II at tremendous human and material cost. The resultant craving
for peace was then periodically shaken by a fear of World War III--a fear deliber-
ately cultivated and utilized but also controlled by the Soviet regime.
It is not to be wondered at then that the Soviet citizen has learned, on the
basis of a disparate past, to temper his hopes--and even his fears--with a healthy
scepticism. - And in this not uncommon virtue may lie the hope for greater and
higher fulfillment.
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FOOTNOTES TO RESHETAR
1. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal', Poslovitsy Russkago Naroda (Moscow, 1862),
pp. 338 ff.
2. Ibid., pp. 343 and 469.
3. Ibid., pp. 207 f.
4. Ibid.., pp. 27 and 30 f.
5. Ibid., pp. 723, 725, 857.
6. Ibid., p. 344.
7. N. S. Leskov, Izbrannye Sochinenia (Moscow, 1945), P. 203.
8. Ibid., p. 206.
9. Ibid. , pp. 213 f.
10. International News Service despatch from Moscow dated November 25, 1957.
Khrushchev made this statement shortly after the Soviet launching of a second
artificial earth satellite, Sputnik II.
11. Polnoe sob ranie stikhotvorenii N. A. Nekrasova v dvukh tomakh (St.
Petersburg, 1886), p. 100.
12. Ibid., p. 21.
13. Ibid., p. 287.
14. Ibid., p. 288.
15. G. I. Uspenskii, Rasskazy i ocherki (Moscow, 1944), p. 181.
16. F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg, 1895),
Vol. 9, p. 23.
17. Ibid., Vol. 9, 13- 32.0?
18. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 327.
19. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 328.
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20. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 182.
21. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 206.
22. Ibid., Vol. 9, ID. 207-
2.3. Ibid., Vol. 10, p. NZ.
24. Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 51.
25. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 206.
26. Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 47.
27. Dal', op. cit., p. 208.
Footnotes to Reshetar
28. Dostoevskii, op. cit., Vol. 11, p. 21. In the same article, written in
January of 1877, he noted that Europeans, who speak only their own languages,
had completely misunderstood the Russians and regarded them as "enemies
and future destroyers of European civilization. " Ibid., Vol. 11, p. 25.
29. Ibid., Vol. 11, p. 26.
30. Ibid.
31. V. I. Lenin, Sochinenia, 4th ed., Vol. 19, p. 115. Stalin, in his essay on
Marxism and the National Question published at about the same time, declared
that "Russia is a semi-Asiatic country and therefore the policy of 'attempted
assassinations' not infrequently assumes the coarsest forms, the forms of the
pogrom." J. V. Stalin, Sochinenia, Vol. 2, p. 338.
32. Lenin, op. cit., Zd ed., Vol. 16, pp. 529f.
33. The Letters of Lenin, transl. and ed. by Elizabeth Hill and Doris Mudie
(New York, 1937), p. 326.
34. Lenin, op. cit., Zd ed., Vol. 16, p. 553 and Vol. 17, pp. 120, 134, 321, 324.
35. N. K. Krupskaia, Memories of Lenin, 1893-1917 (London, 1942), p. 201.
36. Lenin, op. cit., Zd ed., Vol. 17, p. 180.
37. Ibid. , 2d ed., Vol. 18, p. 131.
38. Ibid., Zd ed., Vol. ZZ, p. 328.
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-24- Footnotes to Reshetar
39. 50-letie Vladimira Ilicha Ulianova-Lenina (Moscow, 1920), p. 29.
40. Alexander Blok, Sochinenia v odnom tome (Moscow-Leningrad, 1946), P. 262.
41. The most thorough study of this complex problem concerning the nature and
significance of the Soviet regime's use of Russian national consciousness and
its impact upon the non-Russian population is Frederick C. Barghoorn's
Soviet Russian Nationalism (New York, 1956).
42. J. V. Stalin, op. cit., Vol. 13, p. 38.
43. M. Gorki, V. I. Lenin (Moscow, 1931), p. 24.
44. Stalin told the German writer Emil Ludwig, in an interview granted on
December 13, 1931, that the European image of the Russian was out-of-
date: "In Europe many imagine the people of the U.S.S.R. in the old-
fashioned manner, thinking that in Russia there live people who are, first
of all, submissive, and secondly, lazy. This is an out-of-date and radi-
cally incorrect presentation. It emerged in Europe from the time when
Russian landowners began to visit Paris, squandered plundered money
there and loafed. These were really idle and worthless people. From
this conclusions were drawn regarding 'Russian laziness.' But this can-
not in any way relate to the Russian workers and peasants who strive for
the means of life with their own labor." Stalin, op. cit. , Vol. 13, pp.
110 f.
' **Q.".
:
?;.r.
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