Concerning the fourth peculiarity of "Russian despotism," Wittfogel comments as follows:
The conversion of service land into privately-owned land in 1762 removed one important managerial task from the government roster. But . . . before this occurred the regime had taken on another—the running or supervising of the new (particularly the heavy) industry. By the end of the eighteenth century, state enterprises employed almost two-thirds of all industrial labor. And although in the nineteenth century the private sector expanded conspicuously, until the Emancipation large numbers of laborers continued to work in state enterprises. . . . By 1900 the government still controlled either directly or by means of licensing about 45% of all large modern enterprises of industrial production and communication.11
This reasoning again creates a problem—or even several problems. In the first place, what Wittfogel takes as a starting point itself requires explanation. Why is it that so drastic a "conversion," unheard of in any despotic state, all of a sudden took place in Russia?
Let us remember, for that matter, the fundamental position of Marx, on which Wittfogel himself relies: "The state [in Asia] is the supreme owner of the land. Sovereignty here is ownership of land, concentrated on a national scale. ... In this case no private ownership of land exists, although both private and communal tenure and use of land do exist."[61] Again, Russia does not fit into Wittfogel's metaphorical conception. And if she constitutes a unique case, an exception, then oughtn't this to be explained?
In the second place, the total sovereignty of the state over all of the national product, which is characteristic of despotism, is one thing, and state control over a definite portion of the industrial enterprises is quite another. And the difference here is not only one of degree, but primarily one of the quality of control. For that part of the industrial sector which was in private hands was—there is no getting out of it—private property, just like the land belonging to the nobility in the second half of the eighteenth century (or like the boyar lands before the second half of the sixteenth century).
In the third place, even according to Wittfogel, it was not the state, but precisely this private sector which proved capable of expansion, and increasingly displaced state ownership, gradually transforming itself into not only a social, but also a political force. In short, this was by no means the "weak private property" characteristic of despotism, incapable (by Wittfogel's definition) of having any political influence and unable to defend itself from the arbitrary action of the regime. On the contrary, this was "strong private property" and—what was still more important—capable of becoming stronger yet.
I have dealt specially only with those peculiarities of the Russian political structure which are noted by Wittfogel himself, without even touching on the decisive fact—its capacity for institutional and social development, unthinkable for despotism. Moreover, right up to the twentieth century, there has never been the kind of managerial class in Russia which, as Wittfogel was convinced, properly comprises the soul of despotism.
3. Opportunity, Means, and Motive
Wittfogel's follower and cothinker, Tibor Szamuely, also, as we have seen, finds his arguments insufficiently convincing. Szamuely believes that "the opportunity and the means" for despotism, supplied to
Muscovy by the Tatars, cannot sufficiently explain the explosion of Wittfogel's "institutional time bomb." A motive was also needed, and Szamuely finds one—or even two motives. The first consists in the enormous dimensions of the country, which in themselves, merely by virtue of the need for effective administration, required a despotic form of rule. "But the exigency which called forth the Muscovite variety of Oriental despotism was more pressing than the mere demand for effective administration," he adds.
The socio-political system of the great Asian empires had been created by the paramount need for building and maintaining the waterworks upon which the very lives of their peoples depended. Russia knew nothing of this, yet for centuries she too had been confronted by a task which, though different in nature, was for her just as much a matter of life and death: national survival depended upon the permanent mobilization and organization of all her meager resources for defense, war and colonization, on a scale beyond the European comprehension. Despotic government with all its implications was the instrument she shaped to cope with the everlasting emergency. The ideas may have been brought in from the outside, but the necessity was terrifyingly real.'0
Szamuely's first "motive" does not stand up to even the slightest contact with the chronology. Russia became the gigantic power which the world now knows only long after the detonation of the institutional time bomb. Consequently, its current dimensions simply cannot have anything to do with the explosion in question."
The second "motive" is considerably more serious—if only because such prominent scholars as Kliuchevskii, Pavlov-Sil'vanskii, and Plekhanov paid some degree of tribute to it, as a result of which it found its way into the majority of popular surveys of Russian history. The geopolitical position of Muscovy—so runs the stereotype— placed it in essentially the same position in which climatic conditions placed the great Asiatic empires. Finding itself for centuries in the position of a besieged fortress, Muscovy had to defend itself by any and every means. Thus, it was geography (represented in this case by the location of the country) which gave rise to the "Muscovite variety of Asiatic despotism," to use Szamuely's words, just as (in the form of the absence of rain) it had conditioned the ancient Egyptian or Chinese variants. In both cases, national survival depended on geography, which left the respective governments no other choice than to establish a despotism. In this interpretation, despotism was Russia's predestined fate.
We will speak in detail of this stereotype in the concrete historical analysis of Russia's absolutist century immediately preceding the "explosion." But in general terms we must touch upon it here. Surrounded on the West by Lithuania, Poland, Livonia, and Sweden, and on the South and the East by the Tatars, Moscow really did produce the impression of a besieged fortress. And wars did in fact consume a huge part of its resources and energy. Sigismund Herberstein, ambassador of the German emperor, who visited Moscow twice during the reign of Vasilii III, received the impression that, for Muscovy, peace was an accident. During the course of the sixteenth century, it waged ten wars to the West, which took up about fifty years. But the situation in the Tatar South and East was considerably more difficult: from here, if we can believe Fletcher, Muscovy was attacked every year, and sometimes twice a year. Hundreds of thousands of people, and particularly children, who were especially sought after by the Tatar raiders, were driven off into slavery. They were sold in the bazaars of Asia and Africa in such numbers that, Iurii Krizhanich relates, Russian slaves in the Crimea, seeing their fellow countrymen as new prisoners, asked each other whether there were still people in Muscovy or whether they had already all been sold into slavery. This frightening picture, which so struck many Russian historians, requires a closer look, however.
First of all, the wars which Muscovy waged in the West had nothing to do with defense, let alone national survival. Beginning at least in the 1480s, Muscovy was permanently on the offensive against its western neighbors, obtaining western Rus' from Poland-Lithuania, and Kareliia and the Baltic shore from the Swedes and Livonia. Thus, its political "encirclement" was a myth, and its wars in the West were the result of strategic and political choice, and by no means a geographical inevitability.