2. The "Tatar" Interpretation
It is obviously impossible to understand and evaluate Wittfogel's conception adequately without taking into account its basic quality: it is a model of militant scholarship. It is infinitely far from the coquettish "objectivity," the skeptical feeling that one's recommendations are not necessarily valid, the hint of play, and the sense of humor, which are characteristic of the style of many contemporary scholars in our humanistic field, which is suffering from an inferiority complex in this age of the triumph of natural science. In Wittfogel's work there is something deadly serious, rigorous, almost medieval—something between Puritan severity and the pathos of a crusader. This work breathes polemics and boils with passion. Like its author's native country, Germany, it fights on two fronts—the Eastern and the Western—and develops in four directions at once: on the level of abstract theory; on the historical level (or that of applied theory); on the methodological level; and on the political level. All this is terribly awkward to analyze, because it is tied up in such a tight knot that it is impossible either to reject or to accept it totally. It is this homogeneity or synthesis—I do not know how best to express it—which constitutes the second basic feature of Wittfogel's conception. Therefore, before arguing about it, it would perhaps be best to break it up into its component parts, and then to evaluate each one separately.
Certainly, it would be easiest to say that the conception of "Oriental despotism" was only the historical dimension of the political concept of totalitarianism which was fashionable during the years of the Cold War—that, to paraphrase Mikhail Pokrovskii, it was totalitarianism projected into the past. It is still easier to say, as S. N. Eisenstadt does, that "if one wants to write about communism and Stalin, the best way to do it is not necessarily through writing about Oriental despotism. Neither Oriental despotism nor modern communism get their due in this way."[57]
Such arguments are good for rejecting Wittfogel. For understanding him, they are useless. In the first place, history and politics are synthesized for him in a single and indivisible whole, like the root and branches of a tree: no aspect of politics can be understood without involving history in the analysis, and no part of history can be understood if we leave politics aside. In the second place, the interdisciplinary approach, according to Wittfogel, works only in the context of world history (of what he calls an "inter-area" approach). These are his postulates. One may not agree with them; one may regret that he does not always follow them; but one cannot argue with him constructively without understanding them. A poet, as we know, is judged by the laws of his genre.
At any rate, on this methodological plane, Wittfogel struggled (quite unsuccessfully, to judge by many reviews of his work) on the Western front, so to speak, against his super-specialized colleagues from European and American academia, insisting on his right to synthesize history, politics, and theory. In all other dimensions, his struggle took place on the Eastern front.
The thrust of his conception, on the level of abstract theory, consists in the denial of the Marxist postulate as to the unilinear nature of the historical process. This theme is painful for him, as for any defrocked Marxist, and he returns many times to the assertion of what he calls the "multilinear theory of social development." This is a highly respectable point of view. The only trouble is that, having triumphantly declared it, Wittfogel is unfortunately by no means in a position to adhere to it. In fact, his central thesis asserts that despotism has one historical starting-point—the need to construct gigantic irrigation facilities in Oriental agrarian societies, leading to the formation of a managerial-bureaucratic class which enslaves society. This is why Wittfogel prefers to call despotism a "hydraulic" or "ag- romanagerial" civilization. However, at this point he encounters a strange phenomenon: some civilizations, which correspond to his description of despotism, turn out to be located outside the "hydraulic" sphere. A historian who has asserted the "multilinear theory of social development" should not be bothered by this circumstance. On the contrary, it should only serve as the starting-point for the analysis of other parallel "lines." However, for some reason, Wittfogel declines to follow the logic of the theory he is defending. Instead, he suddenly starts to erect a highly complex hierarchy of despotisms, intended to free politics from hydraulics and to permit him to extend his conception to the predominant portion of the "nonhydraulic" world. In addition to the "dense" or "nuclear" despotisms, this hierarchy includes "marginal" or even "semimarginal" despotisms, which no longer have even the remotest relation to artificial irrigation of crops. Thus, the entire world—beyond the confines of Western Europe and Japan—regardless of the amount of precipitation, is drawn into the pit of hydraulic despotism, and gradually marshalled in one uniform "line." At this point, Wittfogel's conception suddenly begins to take on, obviously and with frightening clarity, those same features of uni- versalism which he so hates in Marxism. Only, in place of the unilinear gospel according to Karl Marx, we get the bilinear (obviously Man- ichaean) gospel according to Karl Wittfogel. And by this detour, we again return to the same old bipolar model. This is in turn directly connected to the problem of Russia as a "semimarginal despotism."
In the early articles of the 1950s and in his book, Wittfogel does not seem to harbor the slightest doubts as to Russia's membership in the despotic family. However, in answering his opponents Nicholas Riasanovsky and Berthold Spuler during a 1963 debate in Slavic Review, he seems a bit more careful. Here is his final formulation:
The two Oriental nations that especially affected the history of Russia prior to recent times were Byzantium and the Mongols of the Golden Horde. It is generally agreed that during the Kievan period, when Byzantine influence was very great, Russian society was pluralistic ("multi- centered") . . . whereas, at the end of the Mongol (Tatar) period there emerged in Muscovite Russia a single-centered society dominated by an autocratic state that exerted great power. This historical evidence suggests that this state fulfilled a number of managerial functions which in this form—and/or dimension—were not fulfilled by the states of late feudal and post-feudal Europe. It suggests on the other hand that in the Orient many states fulfilled such functions.[58]
Let us assume for a moment that this is precisely how it was: the Muscovite state fulfilled certain functions not carried out by the absolutist states, which at the same time were carried out by the despotic states. However, as we already know, there were also a large number of features, functions, and peculiarities in the Russian social, economic and political process—in the very institutional dynamics of it—which were characteristic not of despotism but of absolutism. What is the logical consequence of this? That Russia belonged to the despotic family, or that it belonged completely neither to despotism nor to absolutism? For a historian who believes in the "multilinearity of social development," this, it would seem, should serve as a stimulus for the analysis of a new "line."
Alas, the same theoretical contradiction from which Wittfogel's conception suffers on the abstract level continues to haunt him on the historical level. He again neglects the logic of the theory he is defending. It is true that whereas in the 1950s he emphasized only the similarities between Russia and "Oriental despotism," in the 1960s he noticed the differences. But, having encountered resistance in the historical material, Wittfogel reacts to it, not as a phenomenon requiring new insight, but merely as an annoying hindrance which must be overcome, in order that one may, in spite of it, prove the thesis set up in advance. Let us see how he sets about doing this.