Development As Un-Freedom
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Questionable Sustainability of “Development As Un- Freedom”. Darja Mokrusina Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Culture, Environment and Sustainability Centre for Development and the Environment University of Oslo Blindern, Norway January 2010 iii CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................... VI PREFACE ....................................................................................................... VIII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. X LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND RUSSIAN TERMS ....................................... XI INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 Re-reading Amartya Sen ............................................................................................................................ 3 Notes on Theory and Method .................................................................................................................... 4 Note on Western Sources ........................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER I: THE GOELRO-PLAN ................................................................... 7 1.1. The Pre-Revolution Electrification .............................................................................................. 7 1.2. Fuel Crisis..................................................................................................................................... 10 1.3. The Future State .......................................................................................................................... 14 1.4. “Wide-Ranging Ideas” ................................................................................................................ 18 1.5. From Bright Vision to Bitter Reality ......................................................................................... 22 1.6. The Great Bluff? .......................................................................................................................... 25 CHAPTER II: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF NEP .................................... 34 2.1. The Alternative Cost of Electrification in Terms of Warfare .................................................. 34 2.2. What Was New about NEP? The Historical Context of the Concept of Development as Unfreedom ................................................................................................................................................. 37 2.3. Resolutions of the VIII Congress of the Soviets ........................................................................ 42 2.4. Legitimizing and the New Course .............................................................................................. 45 2.5. International Reception of the Revolution ................................................................................ 49 iv 2.6. Some Conclusions Regarding the Conception and Implementation of NEP .......................... 52 CHAPTER III: THE AUTHORS OF THE REVOLUTION ................................. 55 3.1. From Marxism to Leninism ........................................................................................................ 57 3.2. Korenizatsiya and Razmezhevanie ............................................................................................ 59 3.3. The Role of The "Freedom Loving" Intelligentsia ................................................................. 63 3.4. The "Judeo-Bolsheviks" as Designers of Soviet Development ................................................ 68 3.5. Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER IV: MODERNIZATION AND THE BANISHMENT OF NATURE: RUSSIAN AND SOVIET VISUAL ARTS ......................................................... 74 4.1. Russian Landscapes-Painting before NEP ................................................................................ 75 4.2. From Depiction of the Urban Life to “Industrial Art” ............................................................ 81 4.3. The Fiction of Freedom in Soviet Realism................................................................................. 85 4.4. The Soviet Silent Spring. From Nature to Machine ................................................................. 91 4.5. Concluding Remarks. .................................................................................................................. 94 CHAPTER V: THE CREATION OF HOMO SOVIETICUS: FROM CULTURE TO INDUSTRY ................................................................................................. 97 5.1. Likbez ........................................................................................................................................... 98 5.2. Literature for Children and “Industrial Books” .................................................................... 102 5.3. Science in Early Soviet State ..................................................................................................... 107 5.4. Mythologies of the Soviet State ................................................................................................. 112 5.5. Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................................. 116 CONCLUSION. DEVELOPMENT AS UNFREEDOM TODAY? CONTINUITIES AND RUPTURES ........................................................................................... 120 The Gloomy Statistic .............................................................................................................................. 121 The History Repeats Itself...................................................................................................................... 124 v Calls for More Un-Freedom ................................................................................................................... 125 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................ 128 LIST OF ENDNOTES ..................................................................................... 136 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Poster ―30. November 1902 will be the concert-ball of the electricians‖ 2. Poster ‖Victory of the Revolution lies within the cooperation of workers and peasants. Labours of the cities and villages shall keep abreast shoulder to shoulder against iron chains of landlords and factory owners of the world‖. 3. Painting by L.Shmatko: V.I.Lenin by the GOELRO-Map. The VIII All- Russian Congress of Soviets. December 1920. (1957). 4. The anty-bolshevik poster ‖The happy worker in Sovdepia‖. 5. Poster ‖Kronshtadt‘s card is bitten‖. 6. Poster ―Volkhovstroi gives the electricity!‖. 7. Poster ―From NEP-Russia will arise socialistic Russia (Lenin)‖ 8. Poster ―Kulak-The World Eater‖ 9. Poster "Peace and Liberty in Sovdepia" 10. Caricature originating the period of NEP: "Nepman" 11. Painting by I.Levitan: Above Eternal Peace (1894) 12. Painting by N.Dubovskij: Motherland (1905) 13. Painting by M. Dobuzhinsky: From Petrograd’s Life in 1920 (1920). 14. Poster ‖Hail the Genious of the World‘s Wanders – the Mighty Artistic Labour‖ 15. Postcard by Zolotarev: Development of the Agriculture. (1930). vii 16. Painting by Yakovlev Transport is Tuning (1923). 17. Painting by Brodskij: Dneprostroi. (????) 18. Painting by Bogaevskii: Dneprostroi. (1930) 19. Poster ―Illiterate is as blind one – everywhere failures and adversities await him.‖ 20. Poster ―Lenin about re-building of the country‖. viii PREFACE This has been a painstakingly difficult study. At various stages of my writing I asked myself whether I was doing the right thing, touching upon subjects that many people whom I know hold dear. Though I have Latvian citizenship, I belong to the Russian minority that constitutes a considerable fraction of the population. The hostility between Russians and Latvians in this small Baltic state – not so long ago a part of the former Soviet Union - often gets reinforced by equating things ―Russian‖ with ―Soviet,‖ and the negative connotations of both. Many of my compatriots still believe that Latvia was industrialized and saved from backwardness by the Soviet State, and thus its citizens ought to feel gratitude to their former rulers. Indeed, the Soviet citizens built bridges, roads, rail systems, houses, factories in all 15 republics of the former USSR. This creates grounds for thinking that the Soviet regime was on the whole a positive phenomenon which brought prosperity to poor countries. Many people still believe that life under the Soviet Union offered better opportunities for them and their families. Some of them made great personal sacrifices in the service of the Communist Party. And many deserve the utmost respect. I thus feel it necessary to explicitly state that it is not my intention to disparage the beliefs or hard work of these people, even it was necessary at times to take a critical stance toward certain aspects of the history of the Soviet Union It was never my intention to write a dissidenting study in the tradition of Cold War literature. Nor did I intend to tell scary stories about the horrors attributed to the Bolshevik regime. Alas, the results of my research indicate that the history of repressions