Historical complexity is composed of countless factors that can converge, diverge, or collide. It is always much more than the action of a leader, a ruling group, a dominant class, an elite. To arrive at a better understanding of these factors, broader parameters are indispensable. Even the history of a regime as brutal as Stalin’s is not one-dimensional. We have to pose its whys and wherefores, distinguish between its different phases, and determine when it was in – and when it was out of – touch with reality.
Whatever the regime’s degree of isolation and autarky, the external environment cannot be ignored. Not only were foreign radio broadcasts monitored, but systematic studies of Western economic performance landed on the desks of Soviet leaders. The intelligence services, diplomats, and officials from the Foreign Trade Ministry were so many sources of information about what happened abroad, even though it was reserved for the elite. As to the broader Soviet public, we should not underestimate the importance of foreign literary works in translation. However selective, they were numerous: they included many masterpieces of world culture and the quality of the translations was excellent. Soviet citizens became renowned for being great readers of quality works, not to mention their passion for poetry and its specific political role. Today, these qualities have almost entirely vanished.
I have already alluded to another set of problems, which are just as complex and difficult to disentangle. The Soviet and Western systems impacted on and influenced one another, the repercussions varying in form and intensity with the fluctuating international situation. The image the USSR wished to project of itself – as a country building socialism – was at the heart of this process. A closer look at this theme will allow us to clarify some of its aspects, both in the history of Soviet ideology and in its interaction with the outside world – notably in the images and self-images of ‘socialism versus capitalism’ that the two camps projected at one another at different historical stages. How and why so many left-wing critics of the Western world were led to see in the Soviet Union something it was not, and could not have been, is a complicated issue that belongs here. At the same time, we must not forget the use made by the Right of the Soviet Union’s claim to be what it was not, in order to strengthen its grip on Western societies and try to undermine democratic institutions.
The Soviet claim to represent a counter-model and alternative to capitalism helped the USSR mobilize not only its own people, but also considerable external support. It was used after the war to justify the existence of a ‘socialist camp’ and to deck it out in what seemed like natural finery. But if the voice was Jacob’s, the hands were Esau’s. Looked at more closely, the reality had nothing idyllic about it, but was a phenomenon in its own right – much like the Chinese system, which today is a power to be reckoned with.
The last of the impediments worth mentioning here is the massive use of concepts like ‘totalitarianism’ (I shall return to it) that have greatly contributed to ignorance of the significant changes which occurred in the Soviet system. The blatant disregard for the social dimension was proof positive of the conceptual inadequacy of the ideology of totalitarianism. Its concentration on the regime, as if society was by definition so much putty, contributed to the neglect of the deep structural changes in society that were crucial for understanding the regime’s achievements, internal changes, crises and downfall.
These omissions, encouraged by the aridity of ideological confrontation and propaganda warfare, are themselves legitimate subjects for historical inquiry, as of course is the damage the Soviet regime inflicted on itself by banning free inquiry and debate. Ideological arguments and postulates, wherever they come from, cannot be a guide in research; they can only be one of its topics, with a view to unpicking unwarranted claims and understanding their source and purpose. But the important task is to fashion conceptual tools and research strategies in order to clarify what the Soviet system really was, how it evolved (ideology included), and where it is to be situated on the map of political systems.
Let us reiterate the point: the past – in fact, several pasts – were (and are) active, because in Russia realities (not merely relics) inherited from earlier centuries coexisted simultaneously. Unlike periods when the pace of change is slow, in crisis-ridden periods social strata and phenomena pertaining to different epochs collide violently, and in the utmost confusion they shape and reshape political behaviour and institutions. Tsarist Russia experienced its fair share of upheavals in the twentieth century, and these continued well into the Soviet period, exhibiting a whole range of phenomena bound up with political and social changes: ‘crises’, ‘revolutions’, ‘civil war’, upswings, ‘decline’, and then collapse. This spectacle is not necessarily tedious, even if it is somewhat depressing. We also need to hit upon the right terms for each phenomenon, because we cannot use the same ones for the prewar Stalinist phase of breakneck industrialization, combining social development and a ‘cancerous’ political pathology, and the postwar Stalinist period of rapid economic recovery and retrograde political and ideological campaigns. Finally, we must not lose sight of the swing of the pendulum specific to Russia. An important European power in 1913, it was a devastated country by 1920. Mobilized in an impressive war effort from 1941 to 1945, it was a victorious superpower in 1945 and yet once again ravaged. Ten or so years later, it was a superpower with Sputniks and intercontinental missiles, and the sequel was no less surprising. This is a very dense set of hectic historical processes – and a vast field for students of social change.
We are not going to play the role of counsel for the prosecution or for the defence. Any historical study deserving of the name strives to state what was the case. Where there is something positive – progress – it should emerge clearly; and where there is a pathology (history is full of them), it too should emerge.
We have seen that widespread opinions in political circles, the media and popular perception are so many obstacles to serious study of the USSR. The scholarly works devoted to this country and its system belong in another category altogether; they must be approached quite differently, even if some academics contributed to the confection of a standard ‘public discourse’ on the Soviet Union. Spread over many countries, academic research has generated a wide variety of studies that certainly reflected the biases of the ‘great contest’ in some respects, but which were nevertheless the product of serious, sometimes impressive work. In the absence of access to Soviet sources, they adopted a multiplicity of approaches and formed into various schools of thought. Today, given easier access to the archives, but perhaps also in view of the sad state of contemporary Russia, many colleagues would probably concur that a more balanced approach to the Soviet era, warts and all, is not only possible, but indispensable.
The Soviet Union was an integral and intricate part of the twentieth century. It cannot be ‘decoded’ without a clear grasp of the role it played in that century’s dramas. This brings us back to a virtual truism: the impact of world events on Russia was constant and formative.
The 1905 revolution and the First World War strongly influenced the programme of the Russian Social-Democrats, including the tendency led by Lenin (it was established as a party in 1912), and guided their expectations and strategies. Let us reiterate that this political movement had been created with a view not to exercising power or leading a revolution in the short term, but to participating in it and propelling it in the direction of the prescribed historical stage. However, when the attempt at a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution in 1905–7 failed, Lenin began to doubt the validity of his own and the Social-Democratic Party’s assessment of the extent of capitalist development and its impact on Russia. He had hitherto seen capitalism at work everywhere; now he discovered that the leading force ready to topple the Tsarist regime was not the liberals, but rather the peasantry. Accordingly, Lenin began, rather tentatively, to search for a new perspective and a new strategy. And it was only during the First World War that his initial conception of the coming revolution (in fact formulated by Plekhanov) began to change, although it remained valid for most members of his party.