That Russia was not ready for any form of Marxian socialism was a self-evident truth to every Marxist. However, the mass of new members set no store by such theoretical considerations. They joined the party to serve the cause offered them, including that of thoroughly erasing the original Bolshevism. For a while, the impossible socialism served as a fig-leaf. Yet the events and trends we are studying cannot be described as the ‘failure of socialism’, because socialism was not there in the first place. Devastated Russia was fit neither for democracy as Miliukov understood it, nor for socialism, as Lenin and Trotsky knew full well. In these conditions, the original cadres found themselves flooded by masses of newcomers who shared neither their ideology nor their ethos. The ruling party, denounced throughout the world by the enemies of socialism and Bolshevism, reinvented itself for new tasks and realities, while retaining the original labels.
Viewed in this optic, Lenin’s last writings represent an attempt to refound Bolshevism in order to prevent the emergence of a totally different creature. Lenin realized that his opponents were inspired by the pre-capitalist forms of an absolutist state; and that Russia’s political culture, the character of the cadres formed in the Civil War, and the influx into the party of poorly educated new members with little or no political experience conduced to this regression. The country’s backwardness and the imperative of accelerating its economic growth likewise afforded fertile ground for the construction of a no-nonsense ‘strong state’ – something that could win over, or even serve as an ideal for, people dedicated to their country, whatever its current policies. This is even more true when the backwardness is hampering a country with an imperial past and potential and the pressure being exercised on it by more advanced countries is strong, prompting a commensurate popular mobilization in its defence. In such an atmosphere, the formation of a ‘despotic regime’ was not immediately perceived as altogether different from the construction of a ‘strong state’. Lenin had grasped the difference, called it by its name, and identified the real culprits. To put it mildly, however, most of his erstwhile companions from the heroic years did not get the point. And Bolshevism exited the stage soon after the death of its founder.
22
MODERNITY WITH A TWIST
We have dwelt on the institutional decay of what was supposed to be the system’s mainstay. This chapter will be entirely given over to social dynamics, change, and progress. Here too we shall encounter conflicts and will consider them in due course.
We have already stressed the extent to which the depth of the inherited backwardness and the complexity of the task were dramatically accentuated by the serious regression consequent upon the First World War and the Civil War. In a country already in the throes of a crisis, such regression made the task of reconstruction and recovery that much more difficult and increased the pressure for recourse to the big stick – i.e. the state. However, this assertion must be qualified somewhat in view of the NEP, its vitality, and the interest in its possible retention for a much longer period – an expectation shared by Lenin and Trotsky alike when it was launched. The short-lived NEP still continues to fuel discussion about the alternatives open to Russia at the time (during perestroika, some even believed that it could serve as a model for the post-Soviet period). Evidently, one of the readily available alternatives was a hypertrophied, despotic state, which (as we keep on stressing) found fertile ground in the country’s history – ground rendered even more fertile by recent catastrophes. In 1921, the country was poorer than it had been before the First World War, and it lagged even further behind the West – something that was painfully felt. The ‘historical distance’ between rural, urban and bureaucratic components widened. Those who embarked on modernization after Lenin’s death began by emasculating the original political organization of the revolutionaries who, having arrived in power in 1917, had constructed a state, saved the country from disintegration, and planned great things for the future. They now prioritized their own methods, which combined accelerated economic development with an accentuated form of political archaism, leading some commentators to use the term ‘agrarian despotism’ to characterize the Stalinist state. At all events, we are dealing with the phenomenon of a non-modern modernizing state, creating a conundrum that would influence the country’s destiny for decades.
This line of thought also proves useful when attempting to understand the Soviet phenomenon in its historical trajectory as a whole. The contradiction involved in the category of ‘non-modern modernizer’ endured and manifested itself in a variety of guises after Stalin’s death. The modernizing aspect of the state’s activity (industrialization) generated a series of developments (urbanization, education, upward social mobility) that were broadly emancipatory for the masses of people involved, even if this emancipation was constrained by some powerful checks. One of the keys to the Soviet riddle lies in the interplay between emancipation and the factors fettering it.
Development in the standard sense of the term could not occur without bringing millions of peasants into the towns and partially closing the gap between privileged minorities and the broader mass of the population. Such a dynamic accorded with the plebeian spirit and character of the revolution. Soviet social development was in fact very broad and profound, with momentous effects that varied depending upon the period – the 1920s, under Stalin, and thereafter. Often used and sometimes criticized, the term ‘modernity’ is applicable here so long as we stick to the bare facts and steer clear of its ideological undertones, which are sometimes present in the sources we use below.
INDICATORS OF MODERNITY IN THE USSR
One of these sources is the two-volume social history of Russia recently published by B. N. Mironov, a Russian historian and statistician.[1] His approach is based in the main on anthropometric data, although he also assigns considerable space to social factors. The book contains a wealth of analysis and information. Yet readers must be attentive to the highly subjective and metaphorical character of some of Mironov’s statements, which we shall occasionally react to but mostly allow to speak for themselves.
Mironov’s adoption of ‘the West’ not simply as a model, but as an absolute yardstick for measuring historical development, is disarmingly naive. Readers can judge for themselves as I recount his findings. In sum, what it boils down to is informing us that Russia was not the West. But it is not enough merely to cite what the East lacks when compared with the West. Over the centuries, ‘the East’ (in fact, there are several of them) founded states, resolved problems and produced cultures; accordingly, we must also examine things from within and not simply refer to the non-existent.
Even so, Mironov’s general view of the USSR’s actual advance towards what can be called ‘modernity’ is realistic and competently argued. Russia, he maintains, differed from the West in the way an adolescent does from an adult: it was emotional, hyper-active, lacking sufficient self-control and prudence, tending to experimentation, naive, and absolutist in its demands – but at the same time endowed with an innate curiosity and an ability to assimilate novelty. After all, an adolescent is not a ‘backward adult’. Russians did not produce Western institutions, not because they proved incapable of so doing, but because they did not feel the need for them. Everything of value in the West reached Russia sooner or later – if not at the beginning of the twentieth century, then at its close.