Appendix: Machiavelli in Post-Stalin Russia, 1953–98 Stalin’s death in March 1953 marked a decisive change in the way in which the Soviet state was organized, and in the way in which the state related to its own society. The ‘cult’ of personality, of illegality and arbitrary government was denounced. It was heralded as a return to ‘Leninist’ norms of government (presumably the Lenin of 1922 rather than the Lenin of 1918), with a new emphasis on socialist ‘morality’. Nevertheless, the USSR remained a highly authoritarian, highly secretive state, in which legal norms were applied selec- tively. Not surprisingly, the Soviet regime’s attitude to Machiavelli remained extremely guarded.1 In the 1950s a small number of works on political thought and philosophy do mention him.2 In 1958 A. A. Zimin published his article on Peresvetov, with its speculations concerning the early influence of Machiavelli in Russia.3 A scholarly article by F. De Sanktis in 1964 was one of the few works of note in 1960s on Machiavelli.4 One important development in this period was the beginnings of a discussion on the work of Friedrich Meinecke and the concept of raison d’état (ideya gosudarstvennogo razuma) in which the ideas of Machiavelli were so central.5 Only in the 1970 and 1980s did there begin to develop a substantial scholarly literature about Machiavelli.6 At the same time, Machiavelli is thus much less at the centre of political issues – the problem of order, the construction of a new state – than was the case in the early decades of Soviet power. Surprisingly, there was little reflection on the impact that Machiavelli’s thought had on the shaping of the Stalinist state. In 1977 Fedor Burlatskii, a high-level government adviser under Brezhnev, published The Riddle and Lesson of Niccolo Machiavelli as a series of novellas.7 In this, Burlatsky writes about himself, the dilemmas of an adviser who, understanding the need for changes, is unable to find an agent capable of effecting these changes.8 In the post-Brezhnev era the preoccupation shifted from a concern with Machi- avelli’s political ideas to a concern with their broader social-cultural significance. Under Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’ censorship was lifted. Works by L. M. Batkin, K. M. Dolgov and R. I. Khlodovskii dealt with the man, his ideas and his age. There were studies on Machiavelli and the use of language, his place in Italian drama, his impact on English Elizabethan drama, and on humanism and aesthetics of the Renaissance. Machiavelli’s writings on the nature of political and social orga- nization of Renaissance Italy and ancient Rome continued to draw scholarly attention. Various new studies appeared on Machiavelli’s political and military thought, and his treatment in west European historiography. In the early 1980s the application of Machiavelli’s ideas to the study of domestic and international politics attracted some attention, as a way of exposing the duplicity of the poli- 248 Machiavelli in Post-Stalin Russia 249 cies of the capitalist world. Machiavelli’s thoughts on political leadership became a subject of study. The collapse of communism in 1991 further opened up the possibility for inde- pendent publishing. With the disillusionment of the reform process after 1991 scholars explored the implications of Machiavelli’s writings concerning the nature of power,9 and examined how far political ideology and practice merely reflected the self-interest of politicians.10 A new impetus to the study of Machi- avelli’s ideas on Stalin was given by the publication, in 1992, of Nikolai Ryzhkov’s memoirs with its reference to Stalin’s copy of Machiavelli’s works with his anno- tations and marginal notes.11 In 1992 Boris Lanin published a selection of extracts from The Prince under the heading ‘Adviser to Stalin – Niccolo Machiavelli’.12 Only one analysis of any note, by Nesmeyanov in 1993, examined the relation- ship between Machiavelli’s thought and Stalinism.13 In 1990 Dialog published Maurice Joly’s debate between Machiavelli and Montesquieu in hell.14 In these years Machiavelli’s works were themselves published in large editions. The Florentine Histories (Istoriya Florentsii) was published in a Russian version for the first time, translated by Ya. N. Rykov, and general editor V. I. Rutenburg (Leningrad, 1973, and republished in 1988). Rutenburg provided an article ‘The Life and Work of Machiavelli’.15 The first edition of Machiavelli’s work Izbrannye sochineniya appeared in 1982. This included chapters from The Discourses (trans- lated by R. I. Khlodovskii) and The Prince (translated by G. D. Murav’ev) as well as some of his songs and verse.16 This version of The Prince (Gosudar’) was pub- lished in Moscow in 1990.17 In 1991 extracts from The Discourses were pub- lished.18 A collection of pieces on the life of Machiavelli published in 1993, edited by Artem’ev included The Prince and chapters from The Discourses.19 By 1998 it was possible to buy in Moscow three different collections of Machi- avelli’s works, containing various parts of his work, and of varying quality: Nikkolo Makiavelli, Gosudar’, Rassuzhdeniya o pervoi dekade Tita Liviya. O voennom iskusstve (Moscow, Mysl’, 1997) contains an introduction by Professor E. I. Temnov ‘Machiavelli as a Political Writer’ and also the essay by Dzhivelegov on Machiavelli from the Academia edition and Del’bruck’s piece from the 1939 version of The Art of War; Nikkolo Makiavelli, Sochineniya (St Petersburg, Kristall, 1998), in the series Biblioteka mirovoi literatury, also contains the article by De Sanktis on Machiavelli; and Nikkolo Makiavelli, Izbrannye proizvedenniya (Rostov on Don, Feniks, 1998) with an introductory article by E. I. Temnov ‘Machiavelli as a Political Writer’. M. A. Yusim has made the most significant contribution to the study of Machi- avelli’s political thought in articles dealing with Machiavelli’s ethics and the con- nections between Machiavelli and Marx. The main work is Yusim’s book exploring the impact of Machiavelli’s political thought in Russia from the six- teenth century to the present day.20 Notes Introduction 1. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Machiavelli (London, 1968). 2. Jan Malarczyk (Yan Malarchik), ‘Politicheskoe uchenie Nikkolo Makiavelli’, dissertation submitted for the degree of doctor of science in the field of history (Leningrad, 1958). 3. Jan Malarczyk (Yan Malarchik), ‘Politicheskoe uchenie Makiavelli v russkoi dorevolutsionnoi i sovetskoi istoriografi’, Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie- Sklodovska, section G (Lublin, 1960), vol. vi, pp. 1–20. Jan Malarczyk, ‘Politicheskoe uchenie Nikkolo Makiavelli v Pol’she’, Pravovedenie (Moscow, 1959), no. 2, pp. 153–62. Malarczyk also published a major study in Polish – ‘The Origins of Italian Political Realism: Machiavelli and Guicciardini’ – U zrodel wloskiego realizmu politycznego. Machiavelli i Guicciardini (Lublin, 1963). 4. See the review of the article by Malarczyk: C. Cordie, ‘La diffusione del Machiavelli in Russia’, Rivista di letterature moderne e comparate (Florence, 1961), no. 1–2, pp. 125–6. See the joint article by F. Venturi and J. Malarczyk, ‘Politicheskoe ucenie Machiavelli v Rossii’, Rivista storica ital- iana, A.LXXXV (Naples, 1963), fasc. 2, pp. 394–6. J. Malarczyk, ‘Machi- avellismo e antimachiavellici nell’Europa Orientale del Cinquecento’, in Machiavellismo e antimachiavellici nel Cinquecento (Florence, 1969), pp. 106–14 reproduced in Il Pensiero politico, 1969, pp. 434–44. A. Danti, ‘Machi- avelli e l’Europa Orientale’, Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia (Rome, 1970, May–June), no. 3, pp. 180–9; A. Tamborra, ‘Machiavelli nell’Europa Orien- tale nei secoli XVI–XVII’, Cultura e Scuola, A.IX.F., 1970, nos. 33–4, pp. 142–6. D. Avrese, ‘Machiavelli in Russia’, in Studi Machiavelliani (Verona, 1972), pp. 219–46. 5. M. A. Yusim, Makiavelli v Rossii; moral i politika na protyazhenii pyati stoletii (Moscow, 1998). 6. D. V. Bleznik, ‘Reaktsiya v Ispanii na Makiavelli v XVI–XVII veki’, summary of the article from Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 19, no. 4. Vestnik istorii mirovoi kultury (Moscow, 1959), no. 3, pp. 183–4. See also Esther Menasce, ‘Note Su Ignatius His Conclave’, in Studi Machiavelliani (Verona, 1972), pp. 476–521. 7. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 36–9. 8. G. Procacci, ‘Machiavelli rivoluzionario’, preface to the Collected Works of Machiavelli – N. Machiavelli Opere Scette (Rome, 1969); Ugo Dotti, Machiavelli rivoluzionario (Rome, 2003). 9. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago and London, 1984 reprint), pp. 9, 13. 10. Carl J. Friedrich, The Pathology of Politics (New York, 1972). 11. Cesare Vetter, Il Dispotismo della Liberta: Dittatura e rivoluzione dall’Illumin- ismo al 1848 (Milan, 1993). A. Cobban, Dictatorship. Its History and Theory 250 Notes to pp. x–4 251 (London, 1939). G. Meloni (ed.) Dittatura degli antichi e dittatura dei moderni (Rome, 1983), includes S. Mastellone, ‘Dittatura “giacobina”, dittatura “bonapartista” e dittatura “dell proletariato”’. M. L. Salvadori and N. Trafaglia (eds) Il Modello Politico Giacobino e Le Rivoluzioni (Florence, 1984). 12. Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince (New York, 1970); Barry Cooper, Merleau-Ponty and Marxism: From Terror to Reform (Toronto, 1979); Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us (London, 1999). 13. Jacques Maritain’s discussion of Machiavellianism is outlined in a series of articles, particularly ‘The End of Machiavellianism’, Review of Politics, 1942, vol. 4, pp. 1–33, and ‘Politique et Religion’ (Lettres Française, April 1942). Aron’s response ‘French Thought in Exile: Jacques Maritain and the Quarrel over Machiavellianism’, in La France Libre, vol. VI, no. 33, 1943. Aron’s response is republished in Raymond Aron, In Defence of Political Reason: Essays by Raymond Aron (edited by Daniel J. Mahoney) (Lanham, Maryland and London, 1994). 14. Raymond Aron, In Defence of Political Reason, p. 54. 15. Ibid., pp. 61–2. 16. Raymon Aron’s ‘Essays on Modern Machiavellism’, written between 1938 and 1940, included essays on ‘Machiavellism and Machiavelli’, ‘Machiavelli and Pareto’, ‘Machiavelli and Tyranny’ and ‘Machiavelli and Totalitarian- ism’.