State and Revolution Locating Struve in the history of Russian political ideas GUNNAR OPEIDE 1. то LOCATE STRUVE in the history of Russian political ideas implies the attempt to find some pattern in the turmoil into which Russian intellectual life had been drawn at the turn of the 19th century. Struve seems himself to have had a quite tumultuous intellectual career, being successively a representative of both Russian marxism and Russian liberalism, and, finally, liberal conservatism or even monarchism. Petr Berngardovič Struve (1870-1944) was of German stock and son of an officer in the civil service who ended his career with the governorship of Perm’ The position of his father was probably partly responsible for inculcating patriotic feelings in the boy, who in his early youth even had slavophile leanings, and among whose 'intellectual heroes' Ivan Aksakov and Dostoevskij occupied the first place. In his later teens, however, he was exposed to influences which led him towards liberalism (Kindersley 1962, 3of; Pipes 1970, ijff). Struve recalled later that his love of political liberty was 'born of the enormous wealth of Russian spiritual and cultural life, which obviously [had] ceased to fit the traditional legal and political framework of autocracy or absolutism, even if enlightened.' (cit. Pipes 1970, 20.)1 Being intellectually extremely precocious, Struve was well read in most humanistic disciplines, including philosophy, history and economics, even before entering the university at the age of nineteen. To begin with, Struve was influenced by positivism 1 If the reform policies of the 1860s had been continued, so believes Pipes (1970, 20), Struve would probably 'never have changed his political views, for in his heart he was very much a German with an instinctive respect for the state as a creative force’. Slavica Lundensia 21, 2001, pp. 47-67 Gunnar Opeide and scientism and tended to believe that life and history ran its course according to objective necessities. He had learned also from reading Ključevskij (Боярская Дума) that economics was the basic force in history, and later, as a marxist, he was more consistent than Plechanov in his historical materialism, seeing the central problem of Russian marxism as follows: 'What economic processes, what social relations and forces would determine the downfall of abso- lutism, the conquest of civil and political liberties, the establishment of a constitutional regime [?]' (cit. Kindersley 1962, 33.) Struve became a marxist in the early 1890s and was for some years (1894-8) reputedly the most prominent marxist and social democrat living inside Russia. He wrote the program resolution for the founding meeting in Minsk of a Russian Social Democratic Party in 1898; this meeting figured as number one of the congresses of the Soviet Communist Party. But, intellectually volatile and restless, Struve soon outgrew or developed beyond marxism, and fell out with Plechanov, Lenin and Martov; the final break occurred in 1901. No wonder, given the fact that he had since 1898-9 publicly repudiated central tenets of the marxist teachings and established connections with Zemstvo circles.2 He was later a leading figure in the Union of Liberation and editor of the journal Liberation (Освобождение). Having been, as a 'legal marxist', legal enough to live in Russia, as one of the leading active liberals, he had to stay abroad from late 1901 until he returned to Russia in October 1905. Subsequently, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Kadet Party and was elected as a deputy to the Second Duma. Disillusioned, Struve withdrew from active politics in the summer of 1907 to dedicate himself to publicistic and scholarly work. It was in these years that his philosophical and political outlook was finally formed, although he never succeeded in giving a systematic presentation of it. From 1920 he lived as an émigré in several countries until he died in Paris in February 1944. My discussion will 2 Shmuel Galai (1973, 28) underlines 'Struve's ability to work simultaneously with people from different social backgrounds and of varying political creeds'. With time, however, this and similar traits served mostly as a liability and earned him the reputation of a consummate renegade. 48 Locating Struve in the history of Russian political ideas draw mainly on his writings from the time of the 1905 revolution and the years which succeeded it; in the conclusion, however, I add a few of Struve's comments on the revolution in 1917. 2. Perhaps the main reason why the period we are dealing with was so full of contradictory tendencies has to do with the fact of Russian backwardness, or with the fact of important groups finding their country in a state of backwardness. But Russia was not just a backward country like the Japan of the time, or China; it belonged somehow to the European cultural orbit. But on the other hand it was not just like any other European country, say Spain or Italy; in the eyes of at least some groups it was different, backwards perhaps, but also different in a more or less (opinions differed) positive meaning. In some sense the cultural- ideological situation was felt to be more difficult, complicated and contradictory than in coun- tries like China and Japan. There the cultural gap was so large that the challenge was perceived to be borrowing and learning advanced science, technology, methods etc. from a foreign civilization while keeping and defending domestic cultural and religious traditions as far as possible. Apart from the fact that the geographical proximity in itself made the task of cultural defence a difficult, perhaps even impossible one, the feeling of being a part of European culture and the Christian world would make the idea of Russia defending itself against influence from that very culture somewhat strange. Such an idea could easily have been rephrased as defending backwardness against progress, backward stages against advanced stages of the same cultural continuum or history. It belonged to Europe, and yet it did not belong; it was this, I think, which made possible so many different responses to the challenge of backwardness, or to the general problem of how Russia should relate to Europe. After the introduction into Russia of the philosophy of history of German romanticism, the majority of Russian ideologists, west-ernizers as well as slavophiles, were convinced that Russia and Western Europe were participants in the same historic project. From Caadaev through Herzen, to Dostoevskij and many of the narodniki there goes a line of reasoning which in one way or another 49 Gunnar Opeide makes a virtue of Russian backwardness: from its position as latecomer Russia could observe dispassionately what was going on in the advanced countries, understand them better than they did themselves, draw lessons both to its own benefit, and, when it became ready to utter the last word to the world, also to the benefit of the western countries. Some of this built upon the assumption that Western Europe had betrayed its own true principles, the roots going back to the schism between the western and the eastern churches. Russia's historic task was then to restore these principles. The more secular version of this idea was expounded by Herzen after 1848 when he claimed that Western Europe had betrayed its liberal traditions and, next and most importantly, its own future, namely socialism. Russia, then, should take charge of Europe's destiny. There were, however, some anti-westernizing ideologists who did not fit into this model. They explained the differences between Russia and the West in terms of different, even opposite fundamental principles of an organic or perhaps mystic nature. Here we have Chomjakov, Danilevskij and other authors of theories of cultural types, concluding with the Eurasianists. In their theories Russia does not participate in the same universal historic project as the West; and they are not able to see a virtue in Russian backwardness. They would tend rather not to recognize it, because what was of concern to them could not be measured by comparison with western standards. At the turn of the 19th century, marxism and liberalism were the main westernizing ideologies in Russia. Traditional hegemonic ideologies, such as those of the so-called revolutionary democrats and the narodničestvo were more national and slavophile than westernizing; while being on a collision course with the social and economic policies of tsarism, they were to a considerable extent expressions of the same political culture. This may be understood if we take into account the classical popular assumption that the tsar loved the people and wished to do good for it, but was obstructed by the nobility and the bureaucrats who merely served their own interests. This made for ideologies which valued social and economic 50 Locating Struve in the history of Russian political ideas reforms against the interests of Russian elites, as opposed to such political reforms as would merely check the power of the tsar to the benefit of the elites (Walicki 1969). Both marxism and liberalism signified a break with this ideological tradition; they represented a way of thinking that was fundamentally alien to Russian political culture. The same can safely be said of Struve. Although a Russian patriot, he was as both marxist and liberal an alien to his country's (dominating) political culture. Even in the position of legal or even loyal opposition he was more alien than many of the social revolutionaries and anarchists who threw bombs at members of the tsar's government.3 Struve's monographer, Richard Pipes, argues strongly that he was in heart and soul a convinced liberal even while being a marxist. The main reason why he turned first to marxism was that, being a convinced westernizer and a fighter for freedom, he saw marxism at the time as the best means with which to counteract and discredit the pervasive influence in Russian public opinion of the narodnik socialism of Voroncov, Daniel'son and Michajlovskij and related anti-western and anti-modernist currents.