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The New Soviet History Author(S): Daniel T Southern Methodist University SMU Scholar History Faculty Publications History 12-1990 The ewN Soviet History Daniel T. Orlovsky Southern Methodist University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_history_research Part of the History Commons, and the Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons Recommended Citation Orlovsky, Daniel T., "The eN w Soviet History" (1990). History Faculty Publications. 2. https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_history_research/2 This document is brought to you for free and open access by the History at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. The New Soviet History Author(s): Daniel T. Orlovsky Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 831-850 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881065 . Accessed: 08/12/2014 16:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Modern History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.119.67.237 on Mon, 8 Dec 2014 16:18:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ReviewArticle The New SovietHistory Daniel T. Orlovsky SouthernMethodist University Thefields of late Imperial Russian and Soviet history have reached a newplateau. Recentscholarship-particularly in the areas of socialhistory of lateImperial Russia,the historiography ofthe Russian revolutions of 1917,and the post-1917 historyof theSoviet Union-has broken new conceptual ground and, at leastin thecase of post-1917history, has openedentire new areasof enquiry.These developmentsoften have run well ahead of corresponding openings in the current Sovietdiscourse of historiansand publicists.There, the tendency has been to blamepresent-day problems and moralfailures of theparty on Stalinand his personalregime and on the"administrative command" system.' It is convenient tobegin Soviet history in 1928or 1929with Stalin's "great change," but it is the investigationof theformative years of Sovietpower, which must include the revolutionarytradition going back to 1905-7 and 1917 throughthe end of the twenties,that will supplythe insightinto basic Soviet politicaland social institutions.Only very recently have professional historians in theUSSR begunto call forabandoning the hoary official historiography of the October Revolution andreassessing the role of Lenin.2 With the events of the past eighteen months in EastemEurope and the Soviet Union, some have already proclaimed "the end of history"and haveargued that one neednot bother explaining how theSoviet Unioncame to be, howits basic socialand politicalinstitutions (totalitarian or not)were created, how they developed, and how they launched and nurtured the processesthat have brought us tothe present watershed. It is as ifby labeling the perioda totalitarianor utopiandisaster one is no longerrequired to explainits sourcesor how it worked. This is a peculiarform of moral blindness, for it surely 1 A good summaryof the discussionin the Soviet Union and the basicallyconservative approachof thehistorical profession to themajor issues of Soviethistory may be foundin Mark von Hagen, "Historyand Politicsunder Gorbachev: Professional Autonomy and Democratiza- tion,"Harriman Institute Forum 1 (1988): 1-8. See also AleksandrNekrich, "Perestroika in History:The FirstPhase," Survey30, no. 4 (June1989): 22-43. 2 See V. Startsev,"Istoriia oktiabria v noveisheiliterature," Kommunist 15 (1988): 117-21; P. Volobuev,"Obrashchaias' k velikomuopytu: sovremennye zadachi i metodologiiaizucheniia oktiabria,"Kommunist 16 (1988): 90- 101. For a particularlybold discussionof theorigins of Stalinismthat places its rootsdeeply in theperiod 1917-24 (a view thatderives the nature of Stalinismfrom the moral shortcomings of bolshevismas ideologyand theearly practices and policiesof the Bolshevikregime under Lenin), see A. Tsypko,"Istoki Stalinizma,"Nauka i zhizn'(November-December 1988), pp. 40-48. [Journalof Modern History 62 (December1990): 831-850] ? 1990 by The Universityof Chicago.0022-2801/90/6204-0006$01.00 All rightsreserved. This content downloaded from 129.119.67.237 on Mon, 8 Dec 2014 16:18:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 832 Orlovsky will bluntour criticalfaculties and preventus fromunderstanding similar phenomenawherever they may occur. In theWest, the field of Soviethistory has beenmarked by two paradigmatic shifts,the firstfrom the eclecticismthat produced the handfulof first-rate life-and-timesbiographies of revolutionary leaders and the basic political histories centeredaround the Communistparty to social historybroadly conceived (embracingwhat is nowcalled the "new culturalhistory"), and the second from thehistory of ImperialRussia and the 1917 revolutionsto thehistory of the post-1917Soviet period itself. These shifts have been propelled by new questions andthe use of newsources, but by no meanshave changing scholarly fashions producedconsensus on key historicalissues of the revolutionaryera (1900- 1930). Such basic questionsas theorigins of Bolshevikauthoritarianism, the natureof theStalin regime, the question of "altematives,"the contours of the basicsocial movements of the era and their connection to politicsand culture are still veryhotly debated despite the growingliterature that takes revolution (conceivedof as completedtransformation) as its pointof departure.There remainsa problemof perspective,of pinningdown degree and kind in speaking of the influenceof the prerevolutionarypast on revolutionaryoutcomes. The problemof continuity-or,to use Lenin'sterm, "survivals" (perezhitki)-has notbeen solved despite the heroic efforts of historians convinced that revolution- arytransformation is to be understoodin its own terms.Basic conceptsand categories,such as stateversus society, totalitarianism, Stalinism, and "civil society,"have been deconstructed, tom down, unmasked, and rebuilt leaving only thevaguest sense of closure on thedebates. The interested reader faces a growing mass of publications(a good numberof themoutside the ordinaryrealm of academicdiscourse and moreproperly categorized either as publitsistikaor as whatused to be knownas "unofficialhistory") and theacademic works under reviewhere provide clear examples of current strengths and some weaknesses of a verydynamic field. I shouldemphasize at theoutset that these academic works go farto advanceour knowledge and to deepen discussion-farther than some of therecent debates carried on in printon thenature of Stalinism,the great terror, andthe like.3 I. RESTORINGTHE REVOLUTIONARY TRADrITON In therush to exploitnew openingsin post-1917Soviet history, scholars have nearlysuccumbed to thedanger of ignoringthe foundations of thesubject-the revolutionaryprocesses that led to thecollapse of theOld Regimein February 1917and the establishment ofSoviet power in October.4It is gratifying,then, to readthe work of AbrahamAscher on the 1905-7 revolution,Tim McDaniel's 3 See especiallythe debates in the Russian Review45 (1986): 357-413 and 46 (1987): 375-431. 4 Most graduatestudents in majorRussian history programs these days choose to writeon post-1917topics, especially focusing on the 1920s and 1930s. Originalresearch on the Old Regimeor, more surprising, on the 1917 revolutionsis now rare. This content downloaded from 129.119.67.237 on Mon, 8 Dec 2014 16:18:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheNew Soviet History 833 historicaland sociological analysis of the labor question in revolutionaryRussia, and AllanWildman's second volume on therevolution in thearmy during the summerand autumnof 1917. A fourthbook, Richard Abraham's hagiographic studyof AlexanderKerensky, is farless rewarding.5 Ascheroffers a thoughtfuland elegant study on whatmust be thestarting point forcoming to termswith revolution in twentieth-centuryRussia. The eventsof 1905-7 constituteda violent upheaval in the cities and countryside and a powerful mergingof revolutionary social forces drawn from artisans, blue- and white-collar workers,the freeprofessions and intelligentsia,and the peasantry.It shaped fundamentalattitudes, ideologies, and institutions-the new political parties, trade unions,and Soviets,as well as thequasi-constitutional system launched by the OctoberManifesto and the policies of the autocracy, including those of Stolypin, forexample-and was in everysense a powerfulmodel for the actors of 1917. Ascherhas produceda masterfulsynthesis in narrativeform of the 1905 events. (A secondvolume will cover 1906-7.) The 1905revolution was indeed"unique" and "unprecedentedin scale and ferocity."6From its originsin the social fragmentationgenerated by rapid industrializationinan agrariansociety and the growing hostility between educated elitesand the bureaucraticand militaryfoundations of tsaristauthority, the revolution-whichreally began in the autumnof 1904 with the banquet
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