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Soviet Historiography of the Russian Revolutionary Movement in the Nineteenth Century

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Soviet Historiography of the Russian Revolutionary Movement in the Nineteenth Century FINAL REPORT T O NATIONAL COUNCIL FOPSOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : CREATING A CONSENSUS : SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AUTHOR : Alfred Erich Senn CONTRACTOR : Research Institute of International Chanqe , Columbia Universit y PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR : Seweryn Biale r 801-1 5 COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : DATE : June 1987 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provide d by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research . THE NATIONAL COUNCI L FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARCH Leon S. Lipson Suite 304 Chairman, Board of Trustees 1755 Massachusetts Avenue, N .W . Vladimir I . Toumanoff Washington, D.C. 2003 6 Executive Director (202) 387-0168 PREFAC E This report is one of 13 separate papers by differen t authors which, assembled, will constitute the chapters of a Festschrift volume in honor of Professor Vera S . Dunham, to b e published by Westview Press . The papers will be distribute d individually to government readers by the Council in advance o f editing and publication by the Press, and therefore, may not b e identical to the versions ultimately published . The Contents for the entire series appears immediatel y following this Preface . As distributed by the Council, each individual report wil l contain this Preface, the Contents, the Editor's Introductio n for the pertinent division (I, II, or III) of the volume, an d the separate paper itself . BOARD OF TRUSTEES : George Breslauer ; Herbert J . Ellison ; Sheila Fitzpatrick ; Ed . A. Hewett (Vice Chairman) ; David Joravsky ; Edward L. Keenan ; Robert Legvold; Herbert S . Levine; Leon S. Lipson (Chairman) ; Paul Marer ; Daniel C. Matuszewski ; Alfred G. Meyer ; Peter Reddaway ; Paul S . Shoup ; Vladimir I . Toumanoff; Richard S . Wortman CONTENT S Introductio n Seweryn Biale r I . Trends in Soviet Societ y Editors' Introductio n James R . Milla r The Little Deal : Brezhnev' s Contribution to Acquisitiv e Socialism " Sheila Fitzpatrick "`Middleclass Values' and Sovie t Life in the 1930s " Peter H . Juviler "Cell Mutation in Soviet Society : The Soviet Family " John Bushnell "Urban Leisure Culture in Post - Stalin Russia : Stability a s a Social Problem? " Michael Paul Sacks "The Division of Labor in Centra l Asia and its Influence Upo n Ethnic and Gender Conflict " II . Literary Perspective s Editors' Introductio n Edward J . Brown "Trifonov : The Historian a s Artist " Richard Sheldon "The Transformations of Babi Yar " Donald Fanger an d Gordon Cohen "Dissidence, Diffidence, an d Russian Literary Tradition : The Lonely Dialogue of Abra m Tertz " III. The Language of Ideolog y Editors' Introductio n Alexander Dallin The Uses and Abuses of Russia n History " Alfred Erich Senn "Creating a Consensus : Sovie t Historiography of the Russia n Revolutionary Movement in th e Nineteenth Century " Terry L . Thompson "Developed Socialism : Brezhnev' s Contribution to Soviet Ideology " IV . Sources of Soviet Stabilit y Editors' Introductio n Gertrude E . Schroeder - "The State-Run Economy : Stabilit y or Ossification? An Essay on th e Soviet Production System " Seweryn Dialer "The Conditions of Stability in th e Soviet Union" (Editor s ' Introduction ) III . The Language of Ideolog y For Vera Dunham, Soviet ideology has always been part of a broader politica l culture, existing within a particular social and historical context and neces- sarily changing over time . Her sensitivity to language makes her observations o n this process of evolution particularly insightful . One example is her discussio n of the "pronominal shift" in Soviet poetry, illuminating important changes i n Soviet political culture and regime values during the thirty years following th e October Revolution . Early post-revolutionary poetry proclaimed the invincibility of the col- lective, focusing on the "we" that made the revolution and destroyed the ol d order . Eventually, however, revolutionary ardor waned, particularly as a resul t of Stalin's accusations against many of the revolution's heroes . In the 1930s , at the height of the purges and Stalin's power, "he" became the most importan t pronoun . And there was no question in the Soviet reader ' s mind to whom "he " referred . During the war, when it became clear that "he" was not invincible an d the very existence of Soviet society was threatened by the disaster of the war , personal values began to enter Soviet lyrics . "I" replaced "he" as the center o f poetic attention . After the war, when the danger to the regime had passed, on e of the goals of the cultural retrenchment headed by Andrei Zhdanov was th e restoration of the centrality of regime values in literature, downplaying th e focus on individual needs and extolling the virtues of the positive hero engage d in the postwar reconstruction effort . Following Vera Dunham's example, the essays in this section examine differ- ent aspects of ideology in terms of their historical evolution and changin g semantic formulation . 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY * This paper traces the gradual changes in the treatment b y Soviet historians of individuals active in the 19th centrur y revolutionary movement to buttress the validity of the 191 7 Revolution . The image they seek to create is one of consensus , as though all "right minded" thinkers agreed on the correctnes s and inevitability of the course which led to the Marxis t revolution led by Lenin . The changing biographics which th e paper examines in detail are those of Alexander Herzen, Mikhai l Bakunin, Peter Lavrov and Sergei Kravchinsky . All four men ha d some direct relationship, sometimes adversary, with Marx an d Engels but did not become Marxists . All were subject to shar p criticism in early Soviet historiography, and all have enjoye d considerable rehabilitation more recently . As a consequence of this gradual conversion of 'demons ' into 'angels' the modern Soviet reader may find comfort in th e thought that progress to socialism was not the work of a fe w persons with a true vision and an iron will, but rather th e result of the efforts of all men of good will . *Prepared by the staff of the National Council CREATING A CONSENSUS : SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONAR Y MOVEMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUR Y Alfred Erich Sen n Vera Dunham's work in interpreting Soviet societ y testifies eloquently to the close relationship between history and literature . Her image of the "Iskra complex" in Sovie t literature -- the official belief in the role of the printe d word as the instrument for organizing right thought - - emphasizes the prerevolutionary foundations of Soviet thought , and in turn one is tempted to invoke the principles o f Socialist Realism as an artistic method in considering th e broad trends of Soviet historiography of those prerevolutionar y developments . The historians, of course, already know the roa d for which they are to provide the lighting, namely the path t o the Great October Revolution . While the principles of Socialist Realism are said to b e universal and eternal, their specific application, as Prof . Dunham has so well shown, varies from generation to generatio n and reflects changing values . So too do the historians find i t desirable and useful to modify and alter their images o f revolutionary angels and demons as they demonstrate th e zakonomernost' of the Russian revolutionary movement . Th e recent historiography of the pre-Leninist, pre-Marxist, pre-"proletarian" phase of the revolutionary movement ha s accordingly shown an interesting tendency toward creating a consensus among its leading figures, as if, put in a differen t time and place, they would naturally have been Marxists an d Leninists . The treatment of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Pet r Lavrov, and Sergei Kravchinsky illustrate this trend in a particularly illuminating way, since all four of these men ha d had some sort of direct relationship with Karl Marx an d Friedrich Engels, "the founders of scientific socialism ." an d yet they had failed to become Marxists . They have each bee n the targets of sharp criticism in the past, but in more recen t years they have enjoyed considerable rehabilitation . Herzen tasted both the joy of victory and the agony o f defeat in his lifetime . Having founded the Russian Free Pres s in 1853 and thereby having laid the groundwork for th e development of nineteenth century tamizdat, uncensored printin g and publishing in Western Europe, he clashed with the younge r radicals of the late 1850s and the 1860s . His meeting wit h Nikolai Chernyshevsky in London in 1859 symbolized th e divergence between the "fathers and sons" of the era, and i n the 1860s the Young Emigration, the elements of "Young Russia " that had fled the homeland, openly mocked him . When h e suggested that he and Chernyshevsky, the hero of these youn g men, actually complemented one another, Alexande r Serno-Solovevich denounced him as a "tsarist socialist" who could not understand the imperatives of the revolutionar y movement . Chernyshevsky and Herzen, Serno insisted, wer e "representatives of two hostile natures that do not complemen t each other but rather destroy each other ." 1 Marx and Engels were themselves critical of Herzen . Mar x considered him a man of letters and not a political leader . never want to be associated with Herzen anywhere," he wrote i n 1855 . Herzen's variety of Russian socialism made no sense t o him, and he was suspicious of the influences behind th e Russian . "Herzen," Marx wrote, "received annually for hi s Bell' and for Russian propaganda a rather large sum fro m democratic pan-Slays' in Russia ." Particularly damning i n Marx's view was Herzen's long friendship with Bakunin . 2 V . I . Lenin praised Herzen for his founding of the Russia n Free Press, but he saw the man as an example of nobl e liberalism of the first half of the nineteenth century, a ma n who outlived his time and could not understand the ne w generation of the 1860s .
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