Where does Wittfogel see the difficulties in interpreting Russia as a "nonhydraulic subtype" of hydraulic despotism? In the first place, the Tatars, who, it is assumed, "infected" Russia with the organizational and fiscal methods of despotism, by no means occupied it. They did not live on Russian territory, or mix with the local population, or educate it, so to speak, by personal example and shared experience. Instead, they exercised what Wittfogel calls "remote control" over Russia. This naturally made more difficult so total a degree of "inf ection" as his hypothesis requires.
In the second place, when the youthful Muscovite state threw off the Tatar yoke in the process of its Reconquista, it did not turn out by any means to be fashioned on the Tatar pattern. A whole century was needed before it began to take on those f eatures which gave Wittf ogel a basis for considering it a despotism, even though "semimarginal." This strange disjunction in time, which G. Vernadsky has defined by a kind of metaphor ("influence through delayed action"), requires explanation. In fact, if in the first case we have to do with "remote control" in the spatial dimension, here we get the same oddity in the temporal dimension.
The third peculiarity of "Russian despotism" was the influence exerted on it by the "European commercial and industrial revolution," an influence which gave it an entirely unique character. Answering the challenge of Europe, it behaved as a "hydraulic structure" should under no circumstances behave—even one of semimarginal status. It developed; it underwent institutional modernization.
Finally, the fourth peculiarity consists in the fact that, as distinct from despotism, the Muscovite state lacked absolute sovereignty over the persons and property of its subjects. Having tried to assert such sovereignty in the seventeenth century, it mysteriously lost it again in the eighteenth. Half of the arable land again became inalienable private property, as it had been after the overthrow of the Tatar yoke.
These are the peculiarities of the Russian historical process (or the hindrances to the classification of Russia as a despotist state) which are registered by Wittfogel himself. As to the first, Wittfogel has nothing concrete to say, confining himself to remarking that "The Mongol's remote control over Russia poses many problems that require further investigation."[59] Let's give him this one. Regarding the second, he has an explanation (true, again a metaphorical, not to say eccentric, one). Let us cite it in fulclass="underline"
In Russia the slowness of the transformation [into despotism] was due to . . . the Mongol policy of remote control. . . . Whether the centrifugal political order of Kievan Russia—which at best possessed some quasi-feudal aspects—accelerated or retarded the process is a moot question. There is no doubt, however, that the Mongol conquerors of Russia weakened the forces that until 1237 had limited the power of the princes, that they employed Oriental methods of government to keep Russia prostrated and exploited, and that they did not intend to create a strong—and politically challenging—agrodespotic state. Hence the germs of the system of total power they planted could bear fruit only after the end of the Mongol period. . . . [I]t may be said that an institutional time bomb exploded when the Mongol control collapsed.1
What the metaphor of the "institutional time bomb" (no less paradoxical than Vernadsky's formula) is supposed to mean, the reader is left to guess. Reviewers queried this, but as far as I know, Wittfogel never explained it. It is all the more unclear why the "explosion" of this bomb took place so slowly. (Whether there are slow explosions at all is a question which, it seems, should be asked of sappers.) One thing is clear: this whole explosion of metaphors would perhaps sound good in a poem, but even in a fantastic novel it would seem dubious. As a description of an actual historical process, it sounds fantastic, the more so since in historical reality there is no basis for it whatever. For example, the Tatars not only took no action against the seigneurial property of the Russian aristocracy as an institution limiting the power of the princes, or against the policy of grants of immunity, i.e., the removal of seigneurial holdings from the competence of the organs of state power, but precisely the contrary—at least judging by their policy in regard to the Orthodox church, which greatly strengthened it.[60] What then, we wonder, is the meaning of Wittfogel's declaration that "the Mongol conquerors weakened the forces that until 1237 had limited the power of the princes"?
But this is not the main point. The chief question is why, having arisen out of Tatar obscurity with an untouched aristocratic tradition (and more than this, having evolved, as we saw in chapter one, in the direction of re-Europeanization in many aspects of institutional development), Muscovy suddenly after a century turned sharply toward a recrudescence of Tatardom, and began to lay waste its own aristocracy? "[Wittfogel's] explanation in fact only creates a problem," says one of his closest cothinkers, Tibor Szamuely, on this point.
For a system of government, however, that was so utterly alien from all earlier Russian tradition, to have taken root and flourished with such intensity, the force of example, the mere accessibility of the tools, could not have been sufficient. After all, Hungary and the Balkan countries remained under Turkish rule for periods, in some cases, far exceeding the duration of the Tatar yoke, yet none of them emerged from thraldom as Oriental despotisms. This will not do—as in murder investigations, not only opportunity and method, but motive also has to be established. There had to exist in Russia a particular concatenation of circumstances which required, necessitated or called for the introduction of this socio-political system, and that ensured the rationality and success of its operation—or to use the Toynbeean terms, there had to have existed a "challenge" which evoked an appropriate "response.'"'
As for the third peculiarity of "Russian despotism," here Wittfogel's situation is still more complex. In fact, if his entire explanation of Russia's capacity for modernization consists only in the fact that it is situated closer to Europe than the other "agrodespotisms," then the question immediately arises: what about Turkey, which was still closer? Why did the Ottoman Empire prove immune to the European industrial revolution and incapable of modernization, as an ordinary despotism is supposed to be, in spite of its geographical advantages? Why did it have to be destroyed to the foundations in a world war and transformed into an ordinary national state before it could embark on the path of modernization? Wittfogel, to do him justice, sees this difficulty himself. Unfortunately, the explanation which he suggests is still more unclear than in the case of the "institutional time bomb." "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," he writes, "Ottoman Turkey was faced with just this question [modernization], but internal disintegration and external encroachment prevented a successful industrial and military adjustment. Russia, however, was sufficiently independent to meet the new threat."7
What Wittfogel means by this in concrete terms again remains obscure. That at the beginning of the eighteenth century (when Russia, according to Wittfogel, began its march toward modernization) Turkey was "insufficiently independent" for an analogous action? But in that case, on whom did it depend? And whose intrusion prevented it from modernizing itself? In fact, the Ottoman Empire at this time was a great and mighty power. More than this, as the Russo-Turkish War of 1711 demonstrates, it was stronger than Russia—and more independent, if only because Turkey did not require either Dutch sea captains or Scottish generals, of whom Russia stood in such need precisely because she was modernizing. It turns out that the whole situation was exactly the reverse. The Ottoman Empire was more independent than Russia because of its incapacity for modernization.