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12-1990 The ewN History Daniel T. Orlovsky Southern Methodist University, [email protected]

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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 Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881065 . Accessed: 08/12/2014 16:18

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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 ,the ofthe Russian 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 andreassessing the role of .2 With the events of the past eighteen months in EastemEurope and the , 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 be foundin von Hagen, "Historyand Politicsunder Gorbachev: Professional Autonomy and Democratiza- tion,"Harriman Institute Forum 1 (1988): 1-8. See also AleksandrNekrich, " in History:The FirstPhase," Survey30, no. 4 (June1989): 22-43. 2 See V. Startsev,"Istoriia oktiabria v noveisheiliterature," 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," 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 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, , , and ","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,, 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 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 and . Originalresearch on the Old Regimeor, more surprising, on the 1917 revolutionsis now rare.

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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 -collar workers,the freeprofessions and ,and the peasantry.It shaped fundamentalattitudes, ideologies, and institutions-the new political parties, unions,and Soviets,as well as thequasi-constitutional system launched by the OctoberManifesto and the policies of the , 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 campaignsof "liberal" intelligentsiaand professionals-cuta bloodyswathe throughRussia that momentarily united the twin streams of the plebian (workers, ,white-collar workers) and liberalsocial movements.To thisvolatile mixturewas added the grievances of the . Ascher well understands the ambiguousoutcome of the 1905 events, which resulted in "onlya partialvictory forthe opposition." For him, 1905 produced"no fundamentalchanges in the economicand social structure ofsociety" and political changes "so general"that theirultimate significance could only be workedout in theless thanfavorable circumstancesof post-1905autocratic retrenchment and the experimentsof Stolypin.Ascher downplays the power of social movements in 1905and advances such traditionalexplanations for the ambiguousoutcomes as the stubborn unwillingnessof theautocrat (and certainkey supporters of "unlimitedautoc- racy") to maketimely concessions, the lack of coordination(not to mention differentinterests) of thesocial and nationalmovements, and "society'sdeep distrustof the authorities,"which, when combined with the lack of political experienceof ministersand oppositionleaders alike, led to theparty leaders missingthe opportunityto join a Wittecabinet in the fall of 1905. In The Revolutionof 1905 Ascherprovides the full panoply of eventsand movements, yetthe reader comes away feeling somewhat shortchanged by thelack of new

5 AbrahamAscher, The Revolutionof 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford,Calif., 1988), Ascher'sbook will be followedwith a secondvolume covering the continuation of the revolution andrestoration of authorityin 1906-7; Tim McDaniel,Autocracy, and Revolutionin Russia (Berkeleyand Los Angeles,1988); Allan K. Wildman,The End ofthe Russian Imperial ,vol. 2, TheRoad to SovietPower and Peace (Princeton,N.J., 1987); RichardAbraham, AlexanderKerensky: The FirstLove of theRevolution (,1987). 6 Ascher,p. 341.

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interpretationsandthe failure to establish some sort of in theimpact of socialfactors upon . Theambiguities of 1905-7 workedthemselves out in therevolutions of 1917. Theautocracy collapsed under the weight of World I andthe mass discontent of workers,peasants, and the army. The ""did cometo power,if only briefly,and the variousparties and social movementscrystallized around the discourseof class struggle.In 1917,however, the plebeians turned the tables on "propertied"Russia and all thoseabove themin the workplaceand social .Fueled by massive unrest, a remarkably well-organized labor movementthat embraced both blue- and white-collar workers, and the continuing revolutionin thearmy (and navy), the produced a Bolshevik ,or "Soviet power," which can be seenat leastin politicalterms as a resolutionof the problem of unstable power dating back to the 1905 period. TheOctober Revolution, which of course cannot be reducedto events in October 1917,was a seminalprocess in twentieth-centuryhistory not simply because it becamea globalmodel for plebeian revolution but also becauseit containedthe originsof thebasic social, economic,and politicalinstitutions of the Soviet Union.The truly exciting openings into Soviet history must take as theirpoint of departurethe revolutionary processes that came to fruitionin October. Here McDaniel's bold conceptualwork makes an importantcontribution. Drawingheavily on socialtheory, including the unlikely but uncommonly fruitful combinationof Tocquevilleand Trotsky,McDaniel develops a sophisticated argumentabout the uniquenessof Russia's labormovement, a "combined" movementthat was markedby an "exceptionalthough uneven militancy and "(p. 51). He tracesthe source of these characteristics to the Trotskyite notionof "autocratic capitalism," a form of economic development that promoted a thirstamong workers for a unitaryworldview even though their social reality was markedby fragmentationand theirorganizations by atomization.In 1917, workerswere strongly attracted to ,and eventuallyto theBolshevik variant,in partbecause theyhad alreadybeen conditionedto rejectliberal politics,the rule of , and parliamentaryprocedure and had foundvery attractivea view of statepower that was by no meansanarchist or antistate. Indeed,the wishedfor a strongstate that would protect them and representonly their own class interest. For McDaniel, the language and reality of classconflict were indeed the motor forces of history in 1917,but not in a crudely deterninisticsense. Russia's workers were neither the anarchic mass portrayed by theMensheviks, liberals, and right-wingers northe self-conscious class described bythe and some recent labor historians. The workersorganized into a "combinedmovement quite united in itsradicalism, yet socially fragmented" (p. 351). HereMcDaniel slips into the determinist camp. Given the nature of the Russianlabor movement and the structures within which it operated,neither the Mensheviksnor the ever really had a chance.McDaniel goesout of his way to exonerate the and the Provisional Government, withtheir well-conceived and logical positions that could not gain working-class allegiance. took advantage of thesituation and offered a breakwith thepast, a consistentlystatic model of modernization"based on a rigiddoctrine

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of harmony."For McDaniel,Bolshevism played upon the centralizingand bureaucratictendencies already inherent in the labor movement and succeeded in theaftermath ofOctober in virtually destroying any notion of "civil society." But againMcDaniel rejects the idea that Russian history developed in a linearfashion, fromthe of thetsars to thatof theSoviets. He is interestedin the textureof change, in theunusual combination of capitalism and tradition that led to a "new and insolubleset of socialand political challenges." The historian's missionis to documentand understand those challenges. Theworks of Wildman and Abraham provide a studyin contrastingstyles and subjectmatter. If Wildmancarries the banner of the social historians who reveal thepower of the "revolution from below," Abraham is a throwbackto an earlier historiographythat produced biographies of therevolution's leaders and ignored societyaltogether. Wildman carries out his mandatefar more successfully. The secondvolume of his magisterial The End ofthe Russian Imperial Army offers a vividpanorama of theworkings of thecommittee structure in thearmy and is arguablythe best case studyyet of the institutional/socialnexus that made Octoberpossible. Here we see theworkings of a nascent"civil society" brought forthand nurtured in thecrucible of revolution. Wildman shows the rich array of socialforces at workin thevarious army and theirresponse to the politicalissues of the period. The maximalismof many soldiers and officers was temperedby a desirefor structure and as wellas a burningquest for social justice. Abraham,unfortunately, is handicapped by his subject, Kerensky, who despitehis enormousvisibility in 1917 produceda recordof political ineptitude,theoretical primitiveness, and even deviousness that make it difficult to enshrinehim, even if only sentimentally, as a .Abraham nonetheless tries to do so witha considerableamount of energyand good will. He does succeedin bringingtogether for the first time in any language the salient facts and a gooddeal ofthe pathos of Kerensky's life, though these facts do notat all provethe author's point.For example,Abraham performs an importantservice by layingout Kerensky'smany organizational activities in the revolutionaryunderground duringthe war priorto theFebruary Revolution. But his evidencein no way justifiesthe assertion that Kerensky was Russia's leading revolutionary during the war. The date October1917 has servedto separateartificially the revolutionary traditionand an entirerange of social and culturalmovements from their evolutionand fate under Soviet power. That is whywe mustnot lose sightof the rootsof Soviethistory in the late Imperialperiod and in 1917-hence the importanceof theworks discussed above for the study of Soviethistory proper. Those who wantto restoreor create"civil society"in today'sSoviet Union woulddo well to examinecarefully the recordof social activismand civic consciousnessdisplayed by a widevariety of socialgroups from 1905 through 1917. The failureof the democraticallyoriented civic elementsin 1917 is perhapsthe principal tragedy of thatRevolution. The reasonsfor their failure transcendthe Octoberdemarcation and mustremain high on the historical agendafor the period 1917-29.

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II. THE NEW SOVIET HISTORY

In recentyears historians have brought the methods of socialand cultural history and theexcitement of discoveryto thepost-October period. They have shown fantasticenergy and ingenuityin exploitingnew sources and tacklingproblems and issuescentral to whatshould become a newset of explanationsof howthe SovietUnion developed first into an extremelyauthoritarian party/state and then intothe troubledbut reformingglobal powerof today.The richnessof this historicalscholarship may yet allow us to viewthe real content of Sovietsocial and politicalinstitutions, to better understand how thingsworked in theirown terms,how people lived, suffered, and made their way in theworld. The works underreview here explore a varietyof structuresand movements that refocus our understandingof such issues as stateversus society, the role of culture,and the originsand meaning of Stalinism.Here we havea newwave of scholars building upon the worksof such pioneersas , ,David Joravsky,and . (Fortunately, all of these pacesetters are still very muchengaged in redefiningthe field.) The booksconsidered here include two importantworks on theCivil War/War period (1918-21),7 a study of privatetraders and entrepreneursduring the 1920s,8two worksthat deal directlywith Stalin and Stalinism,9 and three that seek to explainStalinism as a culturalsystem and manner of govemanceby exploring specific areas of social, economic,and culturallife.10 Finally, we havea detailedstudy of theStalin regimein action at the moment of its greatest challenge, during the first two years of domesticmobilization after the German on June22, 1941.11 Particularlyrich are the studies now being produced on thesocial and cultural dimensionsof revolutionary state building, its twin process society building, and theirimpact on politics.This new workis markedby scrupulousattention to untappedpublished (and in somecases archival)sources and a missionto look behindthe conventional labels of "state,""society," and "party,"reexamining therole of the leader figures, Lenin and Stalin, and redefining such paradigms as totalitarianismand, especially, Stalinism. Most of post-1917Soviet history has beena seriesof blank pages that are just now being filled in. Evenold questions suchas thenature of ,the relationship of Leninismand the early years of Sovietpower to the Stalinregime, and the social and culturalcontent of

7 Isabel A. Tirado,Young Guard! The CommunistYouth League of Petrograd,1917-1920 (New York,1988); and RichardSakwa, Soviet Communists in Power:A Studyof during theCivil War,1918-21 (New York,1988). 8 Alan M. Ball, Russia's Last Capitalists:The Nepmen,1921-1929 (Berkeleyand Los Angeles,1987). 9 MichalReiman, The Birth of Stalinism:The USSR on theEve of the "SecondRevolution" (Bloomington,Ind., 1987); and RobertMcNeal, Stalin:Man and Ruler(New York,1988). 10 RichardStites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in theRussian Revolution(New York,1989); Douglas Weiner,Models of Nature:, Conservation and CulturalRevolution in SovietRussia (Bloomington,Ind., 1988); and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovismand thePolitics of Productivity (Cambridge, 1988). " Klaus Segbers,Die Sowjetunionim Zweiten Weltkrieg: Die Mobilisierungvon Verwaltung, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft im "GrossenVaterldndischer; Krieg," 1941-1943 (Munich,1987).

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Stalinismprovoke new answers when examined through the lens of fresh sources andtopics. Studies of Stalin and Stalinism have long passed beyond the immediate post-WorldWar II totalitarianschool in whichsocial scientific models coexisted uneasilywith classic life-and-times biographical studies of the great leaders of the revolution.12 In themid- and early three important books took a fresh lookat "Stalinism" and came up with a varietyof abstract commentaries onSoviet historyduring the Stalin period.'3 Important models were put forth portraying Stalinismas a "mono-organizationalsociety" or as "revolutionfrom above." SewerynBialer defined "mature Stalinism" by such traits as "massterror," "the extinctionof the party as a movement,""the shapelessness of the macropolitical organization,""the extreme mobilizational model of economic growth," "a het- erogeneousvalue system which favored economic status and power stratification, fosteredextraordinary cultural conformity, and was tiedto extreme ," "theend of the revolutionary impulse to changesociety and the persistence of a conservativestatus quo attitudetoward existing institutions," and "the system of personaldictatorship as a symbolof general arbitrary use of power.' 14 Theproblem withsuch a finelyhoned list is thatit fails to distinguish between Stalin the person andStalinism as a governingsystem. This model seems to fitany period of Soviet history(at leastthrough the Brezhnev regime). It comesremarkably close to the classiccharacteristics of totalitarianism. 15 Any new understandingof the Stalinregime will requirea largedose of discovery,of thewriting of historyfrom below, and of theunusual patterns of mutualinfluence of "state" and "society." New work-sometimescalled revisionist-onthe and collectivization,for example, has begunto lay thesefoundations-and, despite loud protestsabout the moral insensitivity of discussingsocial support for Stalinism, describing the purges of the 1930s as not entirelyplanned or centralized,and promulgatinga vision of Stalinismas the "stateagainst itself," the historiography is growing bolder and is maturing.Ideas onceregarded in somequarters as revisionist(and not without suspicion or even outrighthostility)-for example, that the center was notalways in controlof the

12 For a reviewof the role of the totalitarianmodel and its critics,see StephenF. Cohen, "ScholarlyMissions: Sovietologyas a Vocation,"in his Rethinkingthe SovietExperience: Politicsand Historysince 1917 (New York,1985), pp. 3-37. RecentlyJerry Hough, an astute criticof the limitationsof the totalitarianmodel, has raised it again as a valid model for understandingboth the Lenin and Stalinregimes and forcomparisons of theSoviet Union with Nazi (see Russia and the West:Gorbachev and thePolitics of Reform[New York, 1988]). Fora thoughtfulstatement on thecultural and historical origins and role of the totalitarian model,see AbbottGleason, "'Totalitarianism'in 1984," RussianReview 43 (1984): 145-59. Gleason arguesthat any conceptthat could have caughtthe attentionof so manyintelligent observersmust have some validity. 13 RobertC. Tucker,ed., Stalinism:Essays in HistoricalInterpretation (New York, 1977); Sheila Fitzpatrick,ed., CulturalRevolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington,hId., 1978); and SewerynBialer, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability and Changein theSoviet Union (Cambridge,1980). 14 Bialer,p. 10. 15 Thisis HenryReichman's argument in his article"Reconsidering 'Stalinism'," Theory and Society17 (1988): 57-89.

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 838 Orlovsky periphery;that central state authorities often had a dimvision of theirgoals and an evendimmer one of how to arriveat them;that Stalin's policies generated genuineenthusiasm and popular support; that politics did exist under Stalin; that socialgroups could do thepolice work of the state; and that conservative cultural normshad somefoundation in social reality-arenow informingthe work of manyserious scholars, who with patience and perseverence are mining the newly openedarchives and recently more hospitable libraries of the Soviet Union. In the worksof many"Soviet" historians,such views are not meant to absolveStalin or the"center" of moralculpability in thehorrors of theStalin years. All this impliesthat further breakthroughs are possible. RichardSakwa exploresthe originsof Bolshevikgovernment in Moscow duringthe era of and the . The question is theorigins of Bolshevikauthoritarianism during this period, and Sakwasets forth a biting argumentto show thatauthoritarian government was primarilya productof Bolshevikideology and not simply a responseto therequirements offighting the Civil War.Sakwa setsout to attackSoviet and Westernhistorians who liketo portraythe earliest months of rule by Lenin's party, - 1918, as moderateand as an earlyversion of the nonauthoritarian (NEP) thatwas interrupted bythe almost fanatical claims of War Communism-a set of policiesnot to be equatedwith those of mainstreamLeninism. Sakwa relentlesslypursues ideology as thechief cause of Bolshevikexcess during the CivilWar. He rejectsnotions of Russian backwardness and post-1917 continuities withthe Old Regimein institutionsand politicalculture, preferring instead to viewthe revolution as a sharpbreak with the past: "Whatever the previous level ofdevelopment of civilsociety, the Bolshevik regime destroyed not only the old statesystem but also thefeatures of civil society as ithad developed not only as part of the bourgeoissystem but also withinthe workers'movement and ultimatelywithin the Bolshevik party itself.'"16 The "fusionof politicsand ideology"becomes the framework that encom- passesmuch important material about the emergence of municipal,state, and partyinstitutions in Moscowduring 1918-21. This powerfulargument about ideologyreminds us of theneed for "total history," of theimportance of not compartmentalizingtherealm of ideas fromeither politics or society.One can deconstructLenin's "What Is to Be Done?" withits bold assertionsabout consciousnessand spontaneity,and see throughthe rhetoric to a fundamental culturalobsession with control and power. But this kind of analysis requires firm linkswith social groups, the actors or bearers of the cultural norms. Here Sakwa fallsshort. His visionof ideologyis fartoo literal,and he explicitlyrejects the possibilitythat social forces might have any role at all in hisstory. This is most certainlynot an exercisein theNew CulturalHistory. ForSakwa there is a directconnection between Lenin and Stalin, especially in theauthoritarian institutions spawned by Bolshevikideology. State and party bureaucraciesquickly negated the democratic and grassroots impulses momen-

16 Sakwa (n. 7 above), p. 14.

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 839 tarilynurtured in sovietsand other"genuine mass popular organizations" (p. 273). He arguesthat "in a sense the Bolshevikproject was a thoroughly bureaucratizedone from the first, and hence the idea of a laterdegeneration must be treatedwith skepticism. The partyorganisation and itscommittees from the firstabsorbed or destroyed all intermediaryaggregations between themselves and society."For all his importantresearch in theintricacies of Moscowinstitution buildingand politicsduring the Civil Warperiod, Sakwa retums to traditional interpretationsof Bolshevik built upon the radical separation of stateand society. Thisis theopposite of Tirado's view that it was the Civil War that produced the authoritarianismthat changed what she sees as an independentand vitalyouth movementinto the hierarchical party instrument ofthe . The beauty of Tirado'sbook is preciselyits emphasis on youth.It looksat a vitaland, indeed, powerfulsocial group that cuts across class lines and moves the discussion away fromthe all too frequenttendency to view therevolution entirely in termsof workersor peasants. It also showshow social movements are transformed bythe revolutionand howin theyouth movement, as in so manyother spheres (.g., culturaland economic policy, to name just two), the Bolshevik outcome was built uponearlier left-wing, radical youth organizations that had staked out potent roles independentof theparty during 1917-18. The attractivenessof nonclass social andpolitical organizations to working-classyouth was limited,however. During 1917,such youth organizations as the Socialist League of Young Workers quickly beganto attractmore students and white-collarworkers than factory workers. Still,Russian youth organized into yet another "spontaneous" social force that beganeven in 1917 to evolve intoa morestructured organization of "the politicallycommitted." Vague sympathies with the Bolsheviks and the revolution generatedconcrete programs of support,a changeof nameto theCommunist YouthLeague (dominated by party members, of course), and eventually elitism, exclusivity,and bureaucratic control. We stillneed a newrendering of theSoviet state that probes more deeply its culturaland socialroots to discoverhow social forces unleashed or upliftedby revolutioninfused the structures ofthe state. What Sakwa does show, however, is theremarkable conflict that surrounded institution building during this formative periodof Soviet history.Conflict took place both amongand withinthe Komsomoland the partyand tradeunions, for example, with the forcesof "reform"and "democracy" emerging as losersby 1921.It wasas ifpolitics had becomefirmly rooted in a corporative,bureaucratic polity that pitted rival groups of nonworkers(with or withoutworker allies) againstone another.With the (and thenobility) gone, class politicswere no longerappropriate; indeed,class identityitself would become increasingly problematic.17 It would

17 See the discussionof Leopold H. Haimson,"The Problemof Social Identitiesin Early Twentieth-CenturyRussia," pp. 3-20; WilliamG. Rosenberg,"Identities, Power and Social Interactionin RevolutionaryRussia," pp. 21-28; andAlfred J. Rieber,"Landed ,State Authority,and Civil War,"pp. 29-38-all in SlavicReview, vol. 47, no. 1 (Spring1988); and thediscussion of Sheila Fitzpatrick,"The Bolsheviks'Dilemma: Class, Culture,and Politicsin

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 840 Orlovsky notbe too farfetchedto say thatsome of theenergies of class conflictbecame absorbedin the corporate struggles within the party and state institutions that had co-optedthe infrastructure of the intelligentsia, the lower middle strata, and the workingclass.'8 MichalReiman and Alan M. Ball breaknew ground in theirstudies of NEP societyand politics.'9Reiman's book caused a stirwhen first published in Germanyin 1979.It is basedon hithertounexploited copies of Soviet documents (key StatePolitical [GPU] [politicalpolice and forerunnerof the Committeefor State Security (KGB)] reportsand correspondence, e.g.) foundin thearchive of the German foreign ministry. These documents permit the author to tracethe step-by-step reaction of theStalin-dominated party leadership to what Reimansees as a deepeningsocial crisisat theend of NEP. Reimanwants to documentthe birth of Stalinism, by which he meansthe regime's political choice to respondto a largelyself-generated crisis with a programof socialterror. He shedsnew light on therole of theGPU in thelate 1920sand particularly on the role of its leader,V. Menzhinsky,as a key supporterof theemerging Stalin coalition.Menzhinsky was a majorplayer in debates over economic policy and its relationshipto .In 1928 he garneredsupport for expanded GPU coercivepowers to extricatethe Soviet Union from a life-threateningeconomic crisis.The workingclass in 1928was sufferingits own crisis-a combinationof severehardship and a crisisof identitythat pitted against each other. Fora time,the GPU steppedin to supportmanagers and specialistsin orderto keepindustrial enterprises alive. Reimantells a compellingstory that brings out theconnections between foreign and trade policy and the regime's manipulation ofthe threat of foreign encirclement and internal opposition, fostering a mood that rapidlycame to holdthe regime itself as prisoner.For Reiman, the "Stalin leap forward"at the end of the twentieshad nothingto do withsocialism, and thereforethe entire Stalin experience should not be citedas proofof 's failurein thetwentieth century. Further, Reiman maintains that the essence of Stalinismwas itssocial dimension, the combination of purposefullyunmanaged crisisand the emergence of a stratumof bureaucrats cut off from the masses. Here he firmlyrejects the view of , whom he labelsan apologistfor an idealizedLeninism, or thetrue socialism that was distortedby theevil Stalin. Still,questions remain about the reliability of Reiman's handful of documents and therelative weight that should be givento the views expressed therein. The book is weakestwhen it triesto connectthe momentous social process of industrial- izationin thelate 1920sto therealm of highpolitics. Questionsof class identity,the nature of NEP society,and theproblem of alternativescome to thefore in AlanBall's studyof theNepmen (and women). theEarly Soviet Years," pp. 599-613; RonaldGrigor Suny, "Class andState in theEarly Soviet Period:A Replyto Sheila Fitzpatrick,"pp. 614-19; and Daniel Orlovsky,"Social Historyand Its Categories,"pp. 620-23; and Fitzpatrick'sreply (pp. 624-26)-all in Slavic Review,vol. 47, no. 4 (Winter1988). 18 Thiscomes close to the"state against itself" formulation of GaborT. Ritterspom,"Soviet Politicsin the 1930's: RehabilitatingSociety," Studies in ComparativeCommunism 19, no. 2 (1986): 105-28, and "RethinkingStalinism," Russian History 11, no. 4 (1984): 343-61. 19 Ball (n. 8 above); and Reiman(n. 9 above).

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Whowere these people, suddenly liberated from the of the class war to produce,buy, sell, employ,and otherwisetry to puttheir stamp upon the emergingsocialist society? Were they only survivors, trying to stayafloat against impossibleodds, or did theyhave larger designs upon the socialist polity? What was theirfunction? Ball providesthe answersin a well-researchedand well- craftedstudy of the groupof 500,000 or so individualswho manufactured, managed,bartered, and tradedin thequasi-markets of the1920s. This is fresh material.We learn that unemployed women and former merchants, shop employ- ees, andartisans were most active in thesenew economic activities. Further, we seejust how important their efforts were for the population at largeand even for thestate or socialistsector. The Nepmen supplied much to thestate and provided thegoods and services that the unproductive state and sectors could not offer-andthis was part of the enormousresentment, class envy and animosity,insecurity, and marginalitythat festered throughout the 1920s in relationto NEP and thosewho made it work.Ball's workis outstandingin documentingthe lack of security,institutional guarantees, and sociallegitimacy thatafflicted the Nepmen. From this perspective, the rapidity and violence with whichthey were dispatched in thereheated class warof thelate 1920swas a perfectlylogical outcome. The socialand cultural dimensions of the and the nature of theStalin regime-what we havecome to call "Stalinism"-is thesubject of threeexciting and original books by Stites, Weiner, and Siegelbaum. Each author addressesthe issue of politicsthrough the lenses of societyand culture. Stites's RevolutionaryDreams is a movingand passionate study of the utopian impulses thatfueled the revolutionary process during and after 1917 and their fate during the1920s and early 1930s. For Stites, utopianism, defined as "social andcultural experimentation,anddrastic self-conscious innovation-symbolic and concrete," is centralto all "major social revolutionsof modemtimes."20 This living experimentalismin the arts, popular culture, religion, life-styles, architecture, mythmaking,the organization of laborand management,and the like was a particularlystrong motive force in theRussian Revolution as "botha productof therevolutionary upheaval and a partof itsforce and emotional content." Stites locatesthe roots of revolutionary utopianism in thereligious and popular utopias ofOld RegimeRussia, and he brilliantly demonstrates how the way was paved for Stalin'sown powerful counterutopia bya deeplyrooted Russian state tradition of "administrativeutopia" with "its peculiarblend of symmetry,brute force, and benevolence.'"21Stites writes movingly about the entire range of experiments in the post-Octoberperiod, ranging from and festivalsto the god- buildingof Lunacharsky and Bogdanov. The latter held the view that the essence of religion,its spiritualhuman bond, could be attainedwithout God. They foresaw,even before 1917, a worldof dreams,myths, sounds, and ritualsthat wouldelevate humanity to divinestatus and bring about collective immortality. Stitesoffers a superbanalysis of EmilianYaroslavsky's League of theMilitant Godlesswith its relatively noncoercive agitational approach of converting people

20 Stites(n. 10 above), p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 252.

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 842 Orlovsky tothe view that science was adequateto explainall phenomena.His descriptions ofthe rituals of birth, marriage, and death are priceless entrees into the energized worldof . We learn of Octoberings (the revolutionary equivalent ofbaptisms) with children receiving such names as Traktorina,Tekstil, Robesper, Marks,Engelina, Barrikada, and the like. There is thetouching story of the first recordedOctobering in Kharkovin 1923with its gifts of portraitsof theinfant Lenin,solemn parental promises to raisetheir child in thespirit of Marxism- Leninism,and singing of along with folk songs. Stites is careful notto confusethe peasants' "fantastic ability to absorbnew faiths and rituals" withclaims that bolshevism actually constituted a religion. In thishe follows MauriceHindus, who called it a "nonfaithbecause it was not forgiving, possessedno deity,exalted science and nature,and possessed a 'revolutionary' systemof ethics instead of a humaneone. It lacked beauty, dignity and spirit"; the philosopherBerdyaev, who emphasized its lack of "inwarddrama and depth, its weaknessin religious , and its pedantry"; and ,who said simply,"Marxism-Leninism has no beauty,nor has it anymystical value. It is onlyextremely useful."22 ForStites, Stalinism is thecentral trope, the historical reality that stands in oppositionto the creative,life-promoting, energetic nature of the pre-1929 communistsociety. For Stites,this revolutionary,proletarian morality was "modern,full spirited, humane, rational and healthy." Stalinism represents the "deutopianizingof the revolution."23The "culturalrevolution" of 1928-31 markedthe turningpoint. Stites brilliantly shows in semioticterms how the Stalinistrevolution co-opted and destroyed the earlier utopianism by replacing the eclectic,spontaneous of theearly revolution with a "directed, imposed,monolithic version for the sake of a collectivegoal definedby leaders andthe deified 'I."' ForStites, Stalinism is a "whollyappropriate name for the new politicalculture born in the 1930's," consistingof (1) the ever-present authoritarianelements in bolshevism; (2) themilitary zeal generatedto control and orchestratethe transformation (collectivization and industrialization); (3) Stalin's personaldespotism; (4) thepersistent Russian state bureaucratic heritage; and (5) thesocial authoritarianism of the Russian people themselves.24 Stalin's revolu- tionaryutopia was different from that of the in its dynamism and in its ability, generatedby Stalin's personal role, to magnify the natural elements of fantasy that mustaccompany all radicalchange. Stalin's self-image as father,ruler, elder of thecollective resonated widely throughout the social and cultural field, and Stites is particularlysharp in marshallinghis materialconcerning the astonishingly powerfulStalin of the 1930s. Stites succeeds in fillingthe abstract vessel of Stalinismwith social and cultural content, though in usingthe term he runsthe riskof ignoring the roots of the Stalinist counterutopia inLenin's basic dichotomy in "What Is to Be Done?"-consciousness/spontaneity-and in the intricate historyof the party and the state from 1917 to 1928.Of course,Stites's themes

22 Ibid., p. 122. 23 Ibid., pp. 226-27. 24 Ibid., p. 243.

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 843 mustbe placedin the full context of the 1920s. One must weigh 1920s utopianism againstthe depthof the pluralismof the 1920s and ask how important conductorlessorchestras and plans for megacities, complete with "graphs of life" thatattempted to join dailycommunal life and architecturalplanning, were in relationto suchpowerful issues as statebuilding, social movements (formation and reformationof social and occupationalgroups, including workers and bureaucrats),the emergence of a newSoviet intelligentsia, agriculture, and the party'sown intolerance of dissent. One of Stites'smost important contributions is his analysisof thecult of the machineand of organizationslaunched by Gastevand Kerzhentsevto spread Tayloristvisions of a self-regulating,technocratic society among the still largely agrarianand relatively unsophisticated Soviet workers and managers. The stories of Gastev's ScientificOrganization of Labor (NOT) movement,his Central Instituteof Labor (1920-38), andKerzhentsev's League of Time (the attempt to moveTaylorism from the factories to all spheresof everydaylife) offer insights intotoday's dilemmas in theUSSR. Theyprovide examples of thefacility with whichconservative counterutopias can be builtupon liberationist foundations.25 DouglasWeiner's study of theecology and conservationmovements of the 1920s fitsrather neatly into a similarframework. Once again,a flourishing prerevolutionarycultural movement (this time in the scientificrealm) is even furtherliberated by the revolutionand assumesa vibrantplace in the still pluralisticscientific community of the1920s. The lifesciences became a major ideologicalbattleground during the . Particularly disturbing to certainBolsheviks and their minions in thescientific community was thenotion thatall peoplewere not biologically identical and that nature, "whatever itmight be," was a roadblockto theegalitarianism and espoused by themore rabid proponents of "thegreat change." The Stalinistsrejected theory (in theform of bourgeois science) and promoted miracles:vernalization, acclimatization, and the attendantsocial miracleof collectivizationofagriculture, which were to be producedor assisted by a purely utilitarianscience. The searchfor miraclestook place behindthe mask of revolutionaryutilitarianism and practicality.According to Weiner,the Stalinist view(espoused by littleStalin-scientists) was "not willingto acceptBiology's limitedability to know,predict and controlevents and unableto live withthe limitationsof actingin a statisticallyprobabalistic middle ground."26 Nature was meantto be transformed,and the ecologicalview thatpromoted the healthy functioningof natural systems was deemednot useful enough-indeed, it was a pointof viewthat could only be espousedby the class enemy. The attackon sciencebecame part of the larger attack on NEP. Weinerargues convincinglythat the new Stalinistscience violated the commitment of earlier

25 For anotherfirst-rate examination of the issue of revolutionand culture,see Zenovia A. Sochor,Revolution and Culture:The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988); andthe more recentbook by Lynn Mally, Cultureof the Future: The ProleticultMovement in RevolutionaryRussia (Berkeleyand Los Angeles, 1990); Mark Von Hagen, Soldiersin the ProletarianDictatorship (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990). 26 Weiner(n. 10 above), p. 130.

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 844 Orlovsky radicalRussian scientists to use the study of nature to "drawconclusions about the largersocial and politicalworld." The culturalrevolutionists wanted a science limitedto the role of " handmaidento technology."The larger social and political questionswere to be leftto themetascience of Marxistdialectical materialism. The Lysenkosand Prezents(leading figures in the new Stalinistscientific establishment)flourished in suchan atmosphere,as didyet another version of the stateagainst itself. Weiner tells a highlyoriginal tale of institutionalempire buildingand turf that began soon after the October Rev tion.The various commissariatscontrolled extensive networks and resources, including educational andresearch institutions and even the nature reserves (zapovedniki) that were so centralto the conservation movement. Weiner documents the role of professional organizationsand and of the professional press in promotingStalinist science. This was anotherexample of revolutionfrom below, or perhaps revolutionfrom within.27 Dialectics became the measuringrod of proletarian moralityand scientifictruth. Even the moderate "mechanists" who considered dialecticsa properguiding philosophical worldview, but one thatshould not be consciouslyimposed on an empiricalscience that was entirelycapable of ascertainingthe dialectical structure of nature,were beaten by theDeborinites, whosaw them as theantidialectical favorites of the "bourgeois professoriate."28 The doorwas now opento thecondemnation of entirescientific fields, not to mentiongenerations of talentedindividuals. Nature too was a victim,as can be seen frompresent day ecologicaldisasters in the SovietUnion. The growing ecologicalmovement in theSoviet Union today owes much to the vision, courage, andsound scientific methods of itsearly Soviet predecessors. RethinkingStalinism requires a deeperunderstanding of the basic socialand politicalprocesses of the entireSoviet period.Lewis Siegelbaumtakes the explorationbeyond the cultural revolution into the industrialization process of the 1930s. His subjectis Stakhanovism,that stunning myth of mass mobilization namedfor the miner Aleksei Stakhanov, who on thenight of 30-31, 1935 hewed102 tons of , or fourteentimes his quota.29 Stakhanov's example was quicklytaken up by authorities eager to motivate workers and managers alike, and in thissense the mass movement they forged of those who exceeded their norms maybe seen as one morein a long seriesof largelyunsuccessful attempts to overcomethe market. Here we aredrawn into the sinews of Soviet society during the Stalinyears-the factoryworkplace with its nexusof laborers,foremen, technicalpersonnel, and management; the place of Stakhanoviteworkers in the largersociety; the cultural implications of the movement; and the relationship of thesurprisingly fragmented central party and state organs to thesesocial groups and institutions.This is the "politicsof productivity,"the maneuveringand

27 For a particularlygood discussionof the issue of the sourcesof self-,of the capacityof professionalgroups of intelligentsiato createa Stalinistline frombelow, that is, to thinkand act in Stalinistterms, see Leonid Heller,"Restructuring Literary Memory in the USSR," Survey30, no. 4 (June1989): 44-65. 28 Weiner,p. 126. 29 Siegelbaum(n. 10 above), p. 2.

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 The NewSoviet History 845 accommodationthat infused the industrialization drive of the 1930s in which "society" succeededin contaminatingthe "state." Stateand societybecome mutuallyinterpenetrating entities manifested at all levels,from the workplace up throughthe ministries. Stalinism for Siegelbaum is "an amalgamof practices that bothimpinged on and weresubjected to appropriationby differentgroups and institutions."30 Siegelbaumrejects earlier interpretations of the Stakhanovite move- ment.These include the view that it was a generallypositive rationalization ofthe workplacemade necessary by the inefficiency and laziness of the average Russian worker;the negative view that it exacerbated the "lack ofproportionality among differententerprises and sectors,thus intensifying the planlessness of theentire system'%;31 and that it resulted in seriousdisruptions in production,the increases ascribedto theproductivity of Stakhanovites in factbeing the result of "thor- oughgoingmodernization of plantthat brought improvements in the technical organizationof production."32A corollary to thisview is thatStakhanovism had a politicalfunction: itallowed the regime to create a privilegedcaste of industrial workers.This comes close to Trotsky'sview that Stakhanovism represented the apotheosisof piece ratesand thatit was a plannedattempt to undermine working-classsolidarity by the creation of a laboraristocracy. In an argumentthat sheds much light on theworkings of theStalin regime, Siegelbaumshows thatStakhanovism was not a strategydeveloped by a governmentthat had a clearidea of whatit wantedto accomplish.Nor was it directedsolely at workers. It was an ad hocresponse to long-standingcontrol and motivationalproblems in the workplacethat had been compoundedby rapid industrializationand the constantly shifting composition (in termsof socialclass andlevels of skilland education) of laborand management.33 The factthat the statehad waveredbetween conditional support and outrighthostility in its relationshipsto bothgroups reinforced a politicsof protectionand informal patronagethat tended to preserveconsiderable autonomy for local interests.The lineageof Stakhanovismextended back to thesocialist and shock workof the1920s, which expressed the and ambitionof newcadres of skilledworkers, especially toward the end of that decade. But these mobilizations wentnowhere because of bureaucratizationand thecreation of falsecampaigns and productionresults through the collusionof the tradeunions, enterprise management,and partycells, who all feltthe pressureof highernorms. Managementwas freeto rewardthe labor it found worthy, and it often rewarded thebootlickers or simplymade everyone a shockworker,thereby deflating the concept.

30 Ibid., p. 6. 31 This was the view of the Mensheviklabor activistSolomon Schwarz, writingin Sotsialisticheskiivestnik, quoted in ibid., p. 4. 32 The argumentof Donald Filtzerin SovietWorkers and StalinistIndustrialization: The Formationof Modern Soviet Production Relations (Arnonk, N.Y., 1986). 33 Siegelbaum'sbook shouldbe readalong with the superb work of HiroakiKuromiya on the politicaland social dimensionsof Stalin's industrialdrive, 1928-32 (Kuromiya,Stalin's IndustrialRevolution: Politics and Workers,1928-1932 [Cambridge,1988]).

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Siegelbaum'slively story unmasks the deed itself,Stakhanov's apparently heroicfeat. The factis thatStakhanov's achievement was somethingof a Potemkinvillage. He did notwork alone, as was impliedin initialreports and laterpropaganda. His hewingof coal dependedon theteamwork of several other workersand supervisors, and indeedthe entire performance was stage-managed fromthe outset to gainoptimal results. In no waycould his accomplishmentbe reproduced,even by the most zealous workersfunctioning in the normal workplace.What, then, did the statesupporters of thisstunt have in mind? Siegelbaumhas discernedfour motives: (1) to createa massmovement; (2) to overcomechronic stoppages in productionflow (perceived as the resultof informalconditions on theshop floor and inadequately trained personnel); (3) to testthe commitment ofproduction specialists (technical personnel and managers); and(4) toassault existing shop floor practices by turning the unusual Stakhanovite momentinto the norm. Whatdid the freshly minted Stakhanovite workers gain? For the most fortunate (andthese were a distinctminority) there were promotions into various lower level managerialpositions and a bevyof consumergoods, all providinggrist for the propagandamill and imagesof workersliving the middle-class dream. For the rest,there was the resentmentof fellowworkers (and managers)and the unrealizeddreams of materialgains brought on by a troubledeconomy and the onsetof war.The sorryfact is thatStakhanovism did notbegin to addressthe structuralproblems of laborproductivity or any otherlarge issue in Soviet industry.It was a classiclesson in theweakness of themobilizational mode of overcomingthe market, a lessonthat unfortunately has notbeen learned to the presentday. All ofthese volumes point toward a morecomplete understanding ofthe Stalin era and of thedictator's personal role. They revise the revisionists in thatthey arguethat the center (Stalin or hisgoverning bloc) hada largeresponsibility for the mostextreme domestic policies of culturalrevolution, industrialization, collectivization,and thepurges. This is trueeven if thecenter's policies were unplannedor furtheredby a largesegment of society.These worksreject the notionof a diffuseresponsibility and causality that portrays Stalin as onlya distant figurechairing an executiveboard or as a mediatorof rival groups or factions. In thesestudies Stalin's role is integratedinto its various contexts. One comesaway realizingthat the driving force or theessence of Soviet history is certainlylarger thanStalin alone, that society and culture and local politics also mattered,but that one can'treduce Stalinism to a purelysocial or administrativephenomenon that artificiallyseals off politics from culture or thecenter from the periphery. Stalin was far morethan "chairmanof the board," someonewho mediatedand harmonizeda variety of institutional and viewpoints. His rolewas more forcefuland influential.He setthe tone, fixed and sentthe signals, blatant and subtle,which in thepolitical culture of theperiod were readily picked up by thousandsof smalleror would-beStalins in theparty and stateapparatus. Yet politicalinstitutions were fragmented, and such historical phenomena as Stakha- novismand perhapseven the purges developed with a logicthat was notfully determinedby Stalin'sdirect intervention.

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Amongthe legaciesof the 1930s was a docile,traumatized, and insecure populationand a newcadre of managers(and workers)whose uncertainties and anxietieswere a wayof life despite their empowennent within the bureaucratized structuresofheavy industry. This bureaucratic system and the larger society were ina macabrefashion well prepared for the new wave of total mobilizations called forthby theNazi invasionin 1941. This is a majortheme in Klaus Segbers's importantstudy of wartime economic administration. Segbers reveals in massive detailthe institutional, social, and politicaldimensions of themobilization of Sovietheavy industry, transport, and society for the unparalleled conflict against .The recordwas impressive,though not as impressiveas official Sovietmythmakers would have us believe.The positiveresults of wartime mobilizationwere due neitherto thegenius of Stalin/Party/People(theofficial line)nor to theaccomplishments of the centrally (Vosnesen- sky'sanalysis). Rather, the successes resulted from the flexibility and ingenuity withwhich the apparentlybloated and rigidlycentralized of the thirtiesgave way to new institutions,methods of mobilization,and informal patternsof operationthat made the economyfunction. Stalin, according to Segbers,was a veryimportant figure in all this,but "no moreand no less" (p. 298). A largegroup of industrialadministrators and plannersas well as other high-rankinggovernment and partyofficials had enormousinfluence on the successfuleffort. The warthus represented a kind of liberation,a heady time of extremechallenge and looseningof the most stiflingrestraints within the economicand administrativemechanisms. Segbers is especiallygood on unin- tendedconsequences. Concerning the labor force, for example, he showsthat the influxinto factories of massive numbers of women and peasants eased the process ofbreaking up olderworkplace patterns (remember Stakhanovism) and introduc- ingmore efficient production technologies. It is hearteningto thinkthat "spontaneous" forces of local or midlevelsocial andbureaucratic initiative did indeed exist after the horrors of the 1930s and that theymight exist even today. But therewere failures, too. Segbersshows that despitethe relocation of somefifteen hundred factories from the front-line war zonesto theUrals and beyond,many more thousands of factoriesand people failedto surviveevacuation efforts. Segbers makes a majorcontribution by carefullydefining the innovations in wartimeadministration and balancing them againstthe inheritanceof war communismand later modes of economic administration.He concludesthat the creative improvisations of 1941-44 were theapogee of prior practice. Their legacy was mixed, however. New geographical areasof theSoviet Union and industrieswere opened to developmentafter the war,but the relatively decentralized and flexibleinstitutions of thewar years quicklygave way to an ossifiedadministrative command structure that dragged the economyinto its presentmorass. Segbers's book reminds us of thevery high qualityof German contributions tolate Imperial Russian and Soviet history, a fact all toooften ignored among English-speaking academics. Despitethese pathbreaking works, the field cries out for synthesis as wellas newresearch, for harmonizing the roles of the leading actors (not just Stalin) and socialmovements, politics and society,ideas and action, and so on. We needa

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 848 Orlovsky completemap of the social terrainand manymore studies of thepolitics of discreteareas of institutional life. The late Robert McNeal bravely attempted such a synthesisinhis biography Stalin: Man and Ruler.34 McNeal provides a freshand soberreading of manytraditional sources as well as thenew scholarshipand recentlypublished memoirs. McNeal explicitly rejects attempts at psychological explanationsof Stalin'scruel and morbidpersonality, yet he acceptssuch a personalityas fact.He worksthroughout torelate the record of terror and Stalin's enormouspolitical skills with larger social, cultural, and institutional factors. He putsit bluntly: "There is no pointin tryingto rehabilitate Stalin. The established impressionthat he slaughtered,tortured, imprisoned and oppressedon a grand scale is not in error.On the otherhand it is impossibleto understandthis immenselygifted politician by attributingsolely to him all the crimesand sufferingof hisera, or to conceivehim simply as a monsterand a mentalcase. Fromyouth until death he was a fighterinwhat he, and many others, regarded as a justwar."35 McNealagrees with Khrushchev's assessment that Stalin was "incorruptible andirreconcilable in class questions. It was one ofhis strongest qualities and he was greatlyrespected for it."36 The problemwith McNeal's book comes when one looksfor answers to someof thehistoriographical disputes concerning the Stalinera. On thequestion of the end of NEP, for example, McNeal maintains that therewas an economiccrisis and thatthe idea of a warhad social supportparticularly among younger Komsomol and Partyactivists who were motivatedby genuine idealism. On collectivization,he similarly tries to reconcile theidea thatinitiatives sometimes came from the middle and lower levels of the powerstructure with the long-held view of Stalinas mastermindofevery move. But thisis biographyand notsolely a drydiscussion of domesticpolicy. In a chapterentitled "Murder" (following chap. 8, "Builder"),McNeal takes up the violentnature of Stalin's personalityand triesto pin down the 's responsibility.Basically, he arguesthat Stalin was "moreor less responsiblefor thekilling of a largenumber of the enemy" (p. 161). Thisrefers to theauthor's visionof Stalinas a self-proclaimedcombatant in theclass struggleseen as the highestform of war. But in thischapter McNeal also takesup the issue of individualmurders, specifically the deathsof Stalin's firstwife Nedezhda Alliluevaand , Stalin's crony and possible rival. McNealbelieves Allilueva's death in 1932to have been suicide, and he rightly pointsout that subsequent events gave rise to a widearray of rumors about murder thatspread in theGulag camps,among emigres, and the like. The "morbid deterioration"ofStalin's relations with his dated not from this tragedy butfrom the Kirov murder on December1, 1934.Here again, McNeal finds that thebest evidence for Stalin as murdereris onlycircumstantial. There is good evidenceof conspiratorialactivity in thesecurity apparatus. On theother hand, McNealargues that the evidence for Kirov having been the leader of an organized

34 McNeal (n. 9 above). 35 Ibid., p. 312. 36 Ibid.

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 849 oppositionto Stalin,or a "liberalalternative," is thinand suggeststhat such a conclusionis largelythe product of thewishful thinking of suchdissident (now establishment)historians as RoyMedvedev.37 Still, McNeal seems to findStalin guiltybecause of Kirov'sstatus as a potentialrival. McNeal finds the pattern of Stalin'sresponse to eventsat thistime to be indicativeof a new ruthlessand paranoidattitude toward former comrades, and he uses Stalin'shumiliation of AbelEnukidze as theexample that closes out the chapter. McNeal presents and weighsthe evidence on all sidesof theseissues, but in theend we areno closer to definitiveanswers to thehistoriographical riddles. GivenStalin's commitment to class war and his personal vindictiveness, what does McNealmake of thepurges of the1930s? He comesdown on theside of traditionalinterpretations, namely, that the worst excesses of the 1936-38 period wereorchestrated from the center; indeed, in the case ofthe Ezhovshchina, Stalin was "personallyresponsible for its design."38 But was Stalin mad, as Khrushchev impliedin his "secretspeech"? Again McNeal givesa judiciousbut evasive answer,noting that Stalin was remarkably effective inprojecting his "own reality" (possiblymadness) onto large numbers of people. "And so terror,rationality and insanityappear as inextricablyintertwined inSoviet society under Stalin as inhis persona."McNeal downplaysthe record on center-peripheryrelations and the argumentsofArch Getty on the relatively autonomous workings of the purges away fromthe center,39preferring to speak only of the Ezhovshchina-thewell- publicizedpurges in whichhe findsStalin's personal involvement paramount. So ina sensehe sidesteps the issue of the purges in general as wellas Getty'sargument that,even if the Ezhovshchina is separatefrom the larger issue of purges,it too oughtto be redefinedas a radicalresponse to realproblems of bureaucratization. Hereand on thesubject of collectivization McNeal's analysis loses its focus. He wantsto recognizethe haphazard, unplanned nature of collectivization,for ex- ample,arguing that Stalin came late to a hardline on forcing the pace and attacking theKulaks and that much can be blamedon other politburo members and provincial officials.Yet Taniuchi's work on the Ural-Siberian method implies a moreclear-cut centralgovernment policy on forcedlocal mobilizations, with the transformation of thelocal partyorganizations into more viable central government agents as a result.McNeal's cautious work is impressive,yet the field of Soviet history is too freshto permitclosure on theStalin problem.

37 Here thedebate focuses on thevotes Stalin garnered at theseventeenth party for reelectionto thecentral , a prerequisitefor retaining his postas generalsecretary. In a recentinterview in the leading Soviet academic historical journal, Medvedev and the first Soviet biographerof Stalin,General D. Volkogonov,both agreed heartily that Western scholarship had contributedlittle to an understandingof Stalinor of theStalin problem. In fact,Medvedev went so faras to claim thatWesterners had littlebusiness entering the debates.If such intolerant attitudesmanifest themselves in thenew leadershipof Sovietacademic institutions, the promise of a pluralistSoviet historiography of the revolutionary era will neverbe realized."O Stalinei Stalinizme:Beseda s D. A. Volkogonovymi R. D. Medvedevym,"Istoriia SSSR 3 (1989): 89-108. 38 McNeal, p. 200. 39 J. ArchGetty, Origins of the GreatPurges: The SovietCommunist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (Cambridge,1985).

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 850 Orlovsky

Excitingvistas have openedin Soviet history,and the fieldnow has an unprecedentedopportunity to further its agendas.The openingof thestate and manyregional archives (although the Party archives remain closed to foreign researchers);a new degree of cooperation from Soviet libraries; the outpouring of documentaryand memoirpublications in the USSR; the existencethere of a trainedcadre of brilliantintellectuals formerly working in theunderground but now able to collectmaterials, oral histories,documents, and the like; the formationof neworganizations of Soviethistorians ready and able to engagein dialogue;and the numerous new possibilities for exchange and collaboration with establishedSoviet historians and archivists and their supporting institutions-all pointthe way toward the further development ofthe field. Still, one must be wary of thepitfalls. Among these are theuse of stalecategories, , and problematics(sometimes taken over fromthe mostmainstream traditions of Sovietscholarship); failure to decode the language of Soviet sources; a toonarrow definitionofwhat is "Soviet" thatlimits the field of inquiry to the 1920s or 1930s as if all historybegan in 1921 or 1929; rejectionof therelevance of therich historiographyof the decades leading to 1917;and theparochialism of Soviet- centerednessthat denies any comparative dimension. Recent challenges to the imperialnature of the USSR shouldalso spura reconsiderationofthe construction ofRussian and Soviet self and . Itis clearthat the imperial project of 1918-24was atevery juncture related to the construction ofstate, society, and party.It was Stalin,after all, who as head of the Peoples' Commissariatof Nationalities(Narkomnats) was largely responsible for the peculiar forms adopted forthe Union of SovietSocialist . This solution may be viewedas an early,but profound, post-Leninist watershed for the emerging Stalin governing bloc.It was Stalin,for example, who led the onslaught against Galiev and hisbrand of Muslimnational communism. The Stalin-orchestratedshow trial of SultanGaliev in 1923 and thenaming of his ideas as an "ism"-a different, deeplythreatening, and intolerablevariant of communismthat could only be utterlydestroyed by the centralized empire in Soviet guise-illustrate the kinds of connectionsthat can informand enrichour understandingof Soviet history.40 Historiansof twentieth-centuryRussia have workedwonders. May the field flourish.

40 See Steven Blank's forthcomingbook on Stalin and Narkomnatsto be publishedby NorthernIllinois University Press.

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