Brezhnevism or Neo-Stalinism?

4.2.3. Is there such a thing as Brezhnevism? What, if anything, characterises the ideological politics of Brezhnev's long term in office?

There is such a thing has Brezhnevism, but I don't think Brezhnevism is the right word to use for it. On the one hand, there certainly was a series of policies and actions undertaken by the Soviet government between 1964 and 1982. On the other hand, whether it is correct to apply Brezhnev's name to these policies and actions seems to be to rely on the extent to which Brezhnev contributed to these policies or whether they would have been pursued if he had not been the leader of the USSR during this period.

If there is one aspect of Brezhnevism that seems initially indisputable, it is the Brezhnev Doctrine of armed intervention to prevent the overthrow of socialist governments in Eastern Europe. No better example of this doctrine in action exists than the Soviet and Warsaw Pact deployment of tanks to Czechoslovakia to put down the so-called Prague Spring. However, the decision to intervene in Prague does not seem to have been Brezhnev's call. For instance, in his discussion of the topic, Stephen Hanson mentions not Brezhnev's concern but Kosygin's, even as he refers to the consequent doctrine promulgated in the general secretary's name to be "Brezhnevian orthodoxy."[1]

The explanation for this focus on Kosygin is given by Richard Sawka, who notes the emphasis during the Brezhnev era on collective leadership. Sawka writes that Brezhnev was "dour and (mindful of his predecessor's fate) sought to rule by consensus."[2] Thus, if there was a Brezhnevism, understood as the body of decisions made by the Soviet leadership when Brezhnev was general secretary, it seems unfair to tag this period with his name, despite his status as first among equals with the CPSU leadership.

=====

[1] Stephen E. Hanson, "The Brezhnev Era," in Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 3, edited by Roland Suny (New York: Cambridge UP, 2006), 300.
[2] Richard Sawka, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (New York: Routledge, 1999), 351.

Was Khrushchevism a Period of De-Stalinization?

4.1.3. It is sometimes suggested that historians ought to swap the term "De-Stalinisation" for Khrushchevism. What do you think? Is there such a thing as ‘Khrushchevism’? Can more insight into the transition from Stalinism be gained by focusing on what was distinctive about the ideological politics of the Khrushchev era?

While I am unsure whether there was such a thing as "Khrushchevism," I am certain that it is wrong to equate the Khrushchev era with De-Stalinization. The clearest argument against De-Stalinization" under Khrushchev is the re-emergence of Stalinist policies once Khrushchev was removed from office. A closer look at the ideological politics of Khrushchev's tenure can shed some light on this confusion of terms.

It is tempting to link De-Stalinization with Khrushchev because of the latter's "secret speech" at the CPSU congress in 1956 and its denunciation of his predecessor's cult of personality and crimes. However, it ought not be forgotten that Khrushchev was an active participant in these crimes, particularly when he was first secretary in Ukraine during the 1930s. As Miriam Dobson writes, "condemning Stalin and the terror compelled society to rethink the way it understood its own recent, and very bloody, past—and by extension how people were now to relate to their own life stories."[1] In the case of Khrushchev, such a meditation would require him to review his own personal actions.

Beyond the issue of personal responsibility, Khrushchev also knew that he could not allow the "thaw" that accompanied the speech to become too warm, as doing so would endanger his own position as general secretary and de facto ruler of the country. Quoting Aleksei Adzhubei, William Taubman writes, "Khrushchev sensed the blow had been too powerful, and . . . increasingly he sought to limit the boundaries of critical analysis, lest it end up polarising society."[2] Taubman links the crushing of the Hungarian uprising to the unwanted effects of greater openness. That Khrushchev chose to crush it rather than take a moderate approach demonstrates the extent to which De-Stalinization was a form of cover that Khrushchev provided himself so that, whatever he did, the crimes of Stalin would appear worse.

======
[1] Miriam Dobson, "The Post-Stalin Era: De-Stalinization, Daily Life, and Dissent," Kritika, 12, no. 4 (2011): 907.
[2] William Taubman, "The Khrushchev Period, 1953-1964," in Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 3, edited by Roland Suny (New York: Cambridge UP, 2006), 270.

Revisionism in Stalinist Historiography

What are the (relative) advantages of the revisionist interpretations of Stalinism?
I think one of the most important advantages of the a revisionist interpretation of Stalinism is that it becomes easier through one to understand how and why Stalin undertook the mass repressions that he did. For instance, although the "traditional" historians and revisionists both agree that Stalin ordered mass repression, e.g., in the Great Terror, it is only the revisionist version that engages the social science underlying how a dictator who was geographically quite distant from the scenes of actual violence could order murder and actually have it carried out. Some of the "credit," of course goes to the sequence of secret police chiefs upon whom Stalin relied, but even they ultimately needed to be able to exploit some aspect of the executioners' situation. Whereas the scholarship on Nazi Germany has considered this sort of question for more than twenty years (i.e., Täterforschung), I had not seen such considerations in the literature on Stalin until I read Arch Getty's two books on the Great Terror.[1] Having done so, I can see how the expansive bureaucracy of Stalin's USSR lent itself to the kind of manipulation that, in Germany, culminated in the Holocaust. This to some extent explains the how of Stalin owing to revisionism.

The why is more complex, but again, it is a question I had not seen seriously considered until I read revisionist historians. Here, the emphasis is on going beyond the ascription of mere insanity to Stalin and understanding more completely why he ordered mass violence. Here, although I'm unsure whether she would be correctly identified as a revisionist, given her political conservatism (although I assume she at least relies on revisionists), Anne Applebaum's essay is helpful in undersatnding the actual political motivations: "[Stalin's] violence was not the product of his subconscious but of the Bolshevik engagement with Marxist-Leninist ideology."[2] If we consider Stalin from this vantage, rather than as a crazy person, and if we consider Stalin additionally as building on basic concepts inherited from Lenin, then it becomes much easier to understand his thinking and – perhaps more importantly – the interior logic of that thinking.

====

[1] J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1999); and J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1985).
[2] Anne Applebaum, "Understanding Stalin," The Atlantic, November 2014, available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/understanding-stalin/380786/

Stalinist Totalitarianism

3.1. Stalin’s regime is an archetype (or model) of totalitarianism. Do you agree?

I don't think it's much of a question of whether Stalin's regime was totalitarian. Rather, I think the dispute that has arisen is not over whether it was totalitarian but rather over how well and accurately the term had been defined before the advent of revisionism. This is a question to which I've dedicated quite a bit of thought over the years, but I hope to make my point here without being too verbose. I think there are essentially two points that should be made in justifying Stalin's archetypal status as a totalitarian dictator: the extent to which totalitarianism can be defined abstractly; and the extent to which it can be distinguished from garden-variety authoritarianism.

On the first point, as I mentioned in class on Thursday, Jan Gross (in Revolution From Abroad) offers an interesting definition of totalitarianism, using Stalin's regime as a test case. If we consider totalitarianism from the standpoint of the tendency of totalitarian governments to eliminate public, collective forms of action unless it sponsors those forms itself, then, as Gross writes, "it thus appears that the totalitarian state confiscates the private realm."[1] However, he continues, this is untrue; it is in fact the opposite "because of the privatization of the public realm."[2] What Gross means is that the Soviets established totalitarian control – at least in its occupation of the Kresy from September 1939 to June 1941, was to make people feel as if participation in public forms of collection action was a way to express private desires, whether it was personal empowerment or settling scores with one's enemies. Clearly Stalin's methods in evoking denunciations, e.g., falls under this definition.

On the second point, since it's unlikely that one would define Stalin as anyone but one or the other (authoritarian or totalitarian), I found an article by Paul C. Sondrol particularly helpful in distinguishing the two terms.[3] Comparison Fidel Castro (totalitarian) to Alfredo Stroessner (the Paraguayan authoritarian dictators), Sondrol suggests seven criteria by which to judge an historical situation: Stalin meets six of these seven (role conception as a function, public ends of power, minimal corruption, official ideology, lack of pluralism, and high legitimacy). Where Stalin seems to have fallen short of one of Sondrol's criteria is in lacking personal charisma, although as noted by Philip Boobbyer remarks, among others, Stalin is able to form a personality cult by advancing one for Lenin and connecting himself as the nature evolution in the Soviet leadership.[4]

====
[1] Jan T. Gross, Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1988), 117, italics in original.
[2] Ibid, italics in original.
[3] Paul C. Sondrol, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfred Stroessner," Journal of Latin American Studies, 23, no. 3 (1991): 599-620.
[4] Philip Boobyer, The Stalin Era (London: Routledge, 2000), 15-16.

Why Lenin?

2.2. To what extent was Bolshevist Marxism adapted for the age of imperialism?
I think Bolshevism was fairly adapted to the conditions of imperialism and specifically to the conditions of Imperial Russia. The underlying assumption of the need for a party vanguard, as expressed by Lenin in What Is to Be Done?, is that a class of professional revolutionaries is needed to direct the energy of a revolutionary mass of people toward a political goal, using a concrete ideology such as Marxism. Lenin writes, "At this point, we wish to state only that the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory."[1] Further underlying this assumption is that, in a country like Russia, which lacks an industrial proletariat with class consciousness, a revolution can only be successful when such a vanguard exists.

This consideration does raise the question of whether a country like Germany, which Marx saw as being the ripest ground for revolutionary socialism against an industrial bourgeoisie, would require a vanguard to mount a revolution on the order of that in Russia. Two main points of evidence argue against this viewpoint. First, the more "organic" of the changes in government in 1917, the February Revolution, seems to have lacked a party vanguard directing it, so even a revolution in a country without a formal class of professional revolutionaries could be successful, to the extent that the February Revolution could be considered successful. Second, the revolution that actually did break out in Germany in November 1918 also lacked a party vanguard directing public unrest toward a specific ideological goal. Rather, mutiny in the military culminated in the German Empire's collapse. Thus, even in other imperial age states, a vanguard might not be essential.

Perhaps then the best answer is that Leninism/Bolshevism was adapted for the imperial age in the specific national context of Russia and the specific period of the Provisional Government, but not for the age of imperialism generally. In so far as the ideological goal of a revolution led by a vanguard would be the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletaria, we must consider the Bolshevik seize of power successful.

=== 

[1] V.I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement in Collected Works, volume 5, translated by Joe Fineberg and George Hanna (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm, emphasis in original.

The Road to October

Do you think that the October Revolution would have happened with or without the Bolsheviks? 

I think a revolution of some kind would have occurred without the Bolsheviks but probably not a coup on the level of what the Bolsheviks actually pulled off. Because Kerensky's government refused to end the war and it was fairly clear that Russia would end up on the losing end of that conflict unless Germany was defeated sooner rather than later, it is unlikely that Kerensky's government would have been able to forestall widespread mutiny for very long. The threat of mutiny in and of itself might have resulted in a coup from the military itself on the order of the Kornilov coup or perhaps even from the military rank and file. Of course, it's also true that Germany was on a course to lose the war by the time American troops deployed in Europe, but that deployment was more or less coincident with the October Revolution. The other possibility is that some faction from within the Provisional Government, perhaps the Left SRs, would make a play for power in the environment of widespread mutiny and ride a wave of rank and file military support to political power. Whether that power would exist within the context of the Provisional Government, a military-backed coup, or some combination of the two is difficult of say, obviously, but it does seem to me that the ongoing war was a guarantee of the Provisional Government disappearing at some point.

To elaborate on these points, first, it's necessary to distinguish what the Bolsheviks actually did from the possibilities listed in the previous paragraph. While it is true that the Bolsheviks controlled the Petrograd Soviet at the time that they staged their coup, they were quite far from being able to claim a popular mandate outside the city, much less outside that city's soviet. This being the case, it becomes clear that seizure of power in the capital is more of a decapitating movement than an expression of popular revolt. Nothing else proves this point more than the elections to the Constituent Assembly and the move by Lenin et al. to nullify the results of the election and rule by decree. Orlando Figes in quite clear in his book that Lenin had no interest in drawing political power from a deliberative body but rather to create a dictatorship. Figes writes, "The 'class struggle' and the defeat of the 'counter-revolution' demanded the consolidation of Soviet power and, unless the Assembly was ready to recognize this, 'the entire people' would agree that it was 'doomed to politiical extinction'. It was a declaration of intent to abolish the Assembly, unless the Assembly agreed to abolish itself."[1] Figes's use of inverted commas here is intended not only to provide direct quotation but also to sneer not so subtly at the terminology used by Lenin to deligitimize the institution. Any other party attempting to seize power would have had to do so while maintaining the legitimacy of the Provisional Government or at least of the Duma. In this regard, Lenin's decision to boycott the Provisional Government was wise.

Finally, the Bolsheviks' emphasis on a party vanguard allowed them to harness the popular unrest and violence of the immediate period of the Provisional Government's collapse. Whereas civil wars are commonly environments in which petty violence and personal score-settling become commonplace,[2] and Russia in the fall of 1917 was no exception, the Bolsheviks, operating on the basis of an ideological mandate to direct the power of the masses, could determine how best to tolerate the street violence until their control of power was firm. It is unlikely that any other single party would have had to discipline to take control of such a volatile situation.

=====
[1] Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), 513.
[2] This is a point made well in Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Late Tsarism in Russia

I'm back in school, after having completed my Bachelor's degree on September 1 (below).

Not much time off, but I've started a Master's program in history at the University of Edinburgh, which has an online program. The first class -- Ideology and Politics in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Space -- is a hybrid course taught online and via Skype in a classroom. So far so good. Here's my first discussion post for the course.

=====

I chose to answer these two questions together since I see them as inherently inter-related. In the mid-19th century, the Russian government under the Romanovs was still an absolute monarchy, although it was arguably moving in the direction of a more constitutional state. Since the idea of constitutional governance does not really catch on in Europe until the Enlightenment, it is fair to assess (briefly) Russia's evolution from that point. I had always believed that the Enlightenment more or less failed to influence Russia by virtue of Napoleon's failure there. However, as indicated by Edwin Bacon, the experience of Russian soldiers in Paris as occupiers in 1814 had the effects that Napoleon's invasion could not.[1] Before 1814, the primary reformer in Russia had been Peter the Great, but importantly, his influence was exerted even as he maintained an absolute hold on power. Perhaps the most appropriate comparison for Peter is the "enlightened despotism" of Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Bacon's treatment of late 18th century/19th century Russia begins with Catherine the Great, so it seems appropriate to start there. Bacon notes that her reign was marked by an initial embrace of Enlightenment values that was undone by the anti-monarchism and regicide of the French Revolution, with the empress returning to censorship in its wake. The so-called Great Reformer, Alexander II, who came to the throne nearly sixty years later, is depicted by Bacon as a man torn from both sides, by radical revolutionaries on the left who thought his reforms insufficient and conservatives and but reactionaries on the right who sought to reverse their loss of both serfs and privilege. His assassination resulted in a reversion to severe repression under his son and grandson, Alexander III and Nicholas II, respectively, who ruled as absolute monarchs. Thus, it seems an easy conclusion to draw that Russia's monarchy had moments of development into a constitutional state that were erased under subsequent reigns in which the monarch or his/her successor reacted to revolutionary violence.

Oddly, it seems that it was only Nicholas II who reacted to revolution with anything other than repression, although it was certainly his first response. However, the longer-lived, quasi-reformist of establishing the Duma was increasingly undone by the tsar's prime ministers and the tsar himself, such that, by the time World War I began, the promises inherent in establishing the Duma seemed distant. The conclusion here is that Russia took two steps back for each step forward with regard to a more liberal system of government. Joshua Sanborn,[2] for one, argues that it ultimately took the war for the monarchy to dissolve, but he does not attribute the fall of the tsar to the usual factors of other writers. Instead, Sanborn sees the increasing disintegration of order at the front and in border areas as playing the primary role in the erosion of the tsar's authority. I tend to agree with him on this point.

=====

     [1] Edwin Bacon, Contemporary Russia, 3rd ed. (London: Palgrave, 2014), 16-17.

     [2] Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014).