A History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-First Century, Third Edition

599 Pages·2009·6.054 MB·English

by  Robert Service

robert service
A History of Modern Russia
from tsarism to the
twenty first century
-
third edition
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
To Adele, with love
Copyright © Robert Service, 1997, 2003, 2009
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First published in the United Kingdom by Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1997,
as A History of Twentieth-Century Russia
Maps drawn by Nigel Andrews
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Service, Robert, 1947–
A history of modern Russia : from Tsarism to the twenty-first century /
Robert Service. — 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. c2003.
1st ed. title was A history of twentieth-century Russia.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-03493-8 (pbk.)
1. Soviet Union—History. 2. Russia (Federation)—History—1991–
I. Service, Robert, 1947– History of modern Russia
from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. II. Title.
DK266.S494 2009
947.08—dc22 2009009639
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
ANoteonTransliteration xi
Maps
1 TheRussianEmpirein1900 xii
2 TheSovietUnion,1924–1936 xiv
3 TheSovietUnionandEasternEuropeafter1945 xvii
4 TheCommonwealthofIndependentStatesin1997 xviii
5 TheRussianFederationin1997 xx
Introduction xxiii
1 AndRussia?1900–1914 1
2 TheFalloftheRomanovs1914–1917 24
part one
3 ConflictsandCrises1917 45
4 TheOctoberRevolution1917–1918 62
5 NewWorld,OldWorld 81
6 CivilWars1918–1921 101
7 TheNewEconomicPolicy1921–1928 123
8 LeninismanditsDiscontents 150
v
contents
part two
9 TheFirstFive-YearPlan1928–1932 169
10 FortressesunderStorm:Culture,Religion,Nation 190
11 TerroruponTerror1934–1938 210
12 CopingwithBigBrothers 235
13 TheSecondWorldWar1939–1945 254
coda
14 SufferingandStruggle1941–1945 275
part three
15 TheHammersofPeace1945–1953 293
16 TheDespotandhisMasks 314
17 ‘De-Stalinization’1953–1961 331
18 HopesUnsettled1961–1964 356
19 Stabilization1964–1970 376
part four
20 ‘DevelopedSocialism’1970–1982 397
21 PrivilegeandAlienation 412
22 TowardsReform1982–1985 428
23 GlasnostandPerestroika1986–1988 448
24 ImplodingImperium1989 467
25 HailandFarewell1990–1991 485
26 PowerandtheMarket1992–1993 509
27 TheLoweringofExpectations1994–1999 529
27 AndRussia?From2000 547
Afterword 565
Notes 575
Bibliography 611
Index 647
A Note on Transliteration
The transliterations in this book are a simplified version of the
system used by the US Library of Congress. The first difference
consistsinthedroppingofboththediacriticalmarkandtheso-called
softi.ThuswhereastheLibraryofCongresssystemhasSokol'nikov
andKrestinskii,thisbookhasSokolnikovandKrestinski.Secondly,
theyosoundwhichappearsinwordssuchasGorbachyovisgiven
as an e¨, as in Gorbache¨v. Thirdly, the yeh sound is rendered as ye
whenitoccursatthebeginningofpropernounssuchasYeltsin.
These differences are intended to make the text less exotic in
appearance. By and large, I have kept to the Russian version of
propernames.ButsomelooksooddinEnglishthatIhaveAnglicized
them:thusAlexanderratherthanAleksandr.Finallythereareseveral
non-Russiannamesinthetext.InthecaseofPolish,Hungarianand
Czech leaders, for example, their names are given in their native
version;andthenamesofUkrainianleadersaretransliteratedwith-
outthesimplificationusedforRussians.Thisisinconsistent,butit
helpstogiveasenseofthevarietyofcountriesinvolvedinRussian
history.AfurtherinconsistencyliesinmyuseofRussian-language
names for most places in the USSR: thus Kharkov, not Kharkiv.
Untilallofusbecomemoreaccustomedtoplace-namesaccordingto
theirpost-Sovietofficialnomenclaturethisseemsadecentworkable
compromise.
xi
Introduction
ThecentrepieceofthishistoryofcontemporaryRussiaistheperiod
ofcommunistgovernment.TheweightoftheSovietyearscontinues
to lie heavily on the country. Before 1917 the Russian Empire was
ruled by the tsars of the Romanov dynasty. Nicholas II was over-
thrown in the February Revolution, and the ensuing Provisional
Government of liberals and socialists lasted merely a few months.
Vladimir Lenin and his communist party organized the October
Revolutionin1917andestablishedtheworld’sfirstcommuniststate,
whichsurviveduntiltheUSSR’sabolitionattheendof1991.Anew
compound of politics, society, economics and culture prevailed in
theinterveningyears.TheUSSRwasahighlycentralized,one-party
dictatorship.Itenforcedasingleofficialideology;itimposedsevere
restrictions on national, religious and cultural self-expression. Its
economy was predominantly state-owned. This Soviet compound
servedasmodelforthemanycommuniststatescreatedelsewhere.
The phases of the recent Russian past have passed with breath-
taking rapidity. After the October Revolution a Civil War broke
out across Russia and its former empire. Having won the military
struggle,thecommuniststhemselvescameclosetobeingoverthrown
bypopularrebellions.LeninintroducedaNewEconomicPolicyin
1921whichmadetemporaryconcessions,especiallytothepeasantry;
butattheendofthesamedecadeIosifStalin,whowasemergingas
the leading party figure after Lenin’s death in 1924, hurled the
countryintoacampaignforforced-rateindustrializationandforcible
agriculturalcollectivization.TheGreatTerrorfollowedinthelate
1930s. Then came the Second World War. After Germany’s defeat
xxiii
introduction
in1945,StalinbroughtEasternEuropeunderSovietdominionand
undertook post-war reconstruction with his own brutal methods.
Onlyafterhisdeathin1953couldthepartyleadershipunderNikita
Khrushche¨vbegintoreformtheSovietorder.ButKhrushche¨v’srule
produced such political instability and resentment that in 1964 he
wasoustedbyhiscolleagues.
HissuccessorLeonidBrezhnevpresidedoveraphase,andalengthy
phase at that, of uneasy stabilization. When he died in 1982, the
struggleoverthedesirabilityofreformwasresumed.MikhailGorba-
che¨vbecamecommunistpartyleaderin1985andintroducedradical
reforms of policies and institutions. A drastic transformation re-
sulted. In 1989, after Gorbache¨v had indicated that he would not
usehisarmedforcestomaintainSovietpoliticalcontrolinEastern
Europe, the communist regimes there fell in quick succession.
Russia’s ‘outer empire’ crumbled. At home, too, Gorbache¨v’s
measuresunderminedthestatusquo.Mostofhiscentralpartyand
governmentalassociatesweredisconcertedbyhisreforms.InAugust
1991 some of them made a bungled attempt to stop the process
through a coup d’e´tat. Gorbache¨v returned briefly to power, but
was constrained to abandon his own Soviet communist party and
acceptthedissolutionoftheUSSR.
Russia and other Soviet republics gained their independence at
thestartof1992,andBorisYeltsinasRussianpresidentproclaimed
thede-communizationofpoliticalandeconomiclifeashisstrategic
aim.Severalfundamentaldifficultiesendured.Theeconomy’sdecline
sharplyaccelerated.Themanufacturingsectorcollapsed.Socialand
administrative dislocation became acute. Criminality became an
epidemic. In October 1993, when Yeltsin faced stalemate in his
contest with leading opponents, he ordered the storming of the
Russian White House and their arrest. Although he introduced a
freshconstitutioninDecember,strongchallengestohispoliciesof
reform remained. Communism had not been just an ideology, a
partyandastate;ithadbeenconsolidatedasanentiresocialorder,
and the attitudes, techniques and objective interests within society
wereresistanttorapiddissolution.Thepathtowardsdemocracyand
themarketeconomywasstrewnwithobstacles.Yeltsin’ssuccessors
xxiv
introduction
VladimirPutinandDmitriMedvedevbusiedthemselveswithorderly
centralpowerattheexpenseoftheconstitutionandlegality.They
alsocultivatedrespectforSovietachievements,callingforanendto
denigration of the USSR. Political and business elites benefited
hugely from the profits made in energy exports. The Kremlin’s
ruling group ruthlessly eliminated opposition. Authoritarian rule
wasre-imposed.
Thisturbulenthistoryledtodifferinginterpretations.Journalists
and former diplomats published the initial accounts. Some were
vehementlyanti-Soviet,otherswereequallypassionateontheother
side of the debate – and still others avoided taking political sides
andconcentratedondepictingthebizarreaspectsoflifeintheUSSR.
Fewforeignersproducedworksofsophisticatedanalysisbeforethe
Second World War. It was Russian refugees and deportees who
provided the works of lasting value. The Western focus on Soviet
affairswassharpenedafter1945whentheUSSRemergedasaworld
power.ResearchinstituteswerecreatedintheUSA,WesternEurope
and Japan; books and articles appeared in a publishing torrent.
Debate was always lively, often polemical. Such discussions were
severely curtailed for decades in Moscow by a regime seeking to
imposedoctrinaluniformity;butfromthelate1980sSovietwriters
toowerepermittedtopublishtheresultsoftheirthinking.
Officialcommunistpropagandistsfrom1917throughtothemid-
1980s claimed there was nothing seriously wrong with the Soviet
Union and that a perfectly functioning socialist order was within
attainablerange.1Suchboastswerechallengedfromthestart.Otto
Bauer, an Austrian Marxist, regarded the USSR as a barbarous
state. He accepted, though, that the Bolsheviks had produced as
much socialism as was possible in so backward a country.2 Yuli
Martov, Karl Kautsky, Bertrand Russell and Fe¨dor Dan retorted
thatLeninism,beingbasedondictatorshipandbureaucracy,wasa
fundamentaldistortionofanyworthwhileversionofsocialism.3By
the end of the 1920s Lev Trotski was making similar points about
bureaucraticdegeneration,albeitwiththeprovisothatitwasStalin’s
misapplicationofLeninismratherthanLeninismitselfthatwasthe
crucible for the distorting process.4 Other writers, especially Ivan
xxv
introduction
Ilin and, in later decades, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, denounced
Leninism as an import entirely alien to traditional Russian virtues
andcustoms.5Thisschoolofthoughtwaschallengedbythereligious
philosopherandsocialistNikolaiBerdyaevwhodepictedtheUSSR
as a reincarnation of Russian intellectual extremism. Berdyaev
argued that the regime of Lenin and Stalin had reinforced the tra-
ditionsofpoliticalrepression,ideologicalintoleranceandapassive,
resentfulsociety.6
Rene´Fu¨lo¨p-Miller’srejoinderwasthatallthisunderestimatedthe
cultural effervescence after the October Revolution.7 But Nikolai
Trubetskoi,whofledRussiaafterthecommunistseizureofpower,
offeredyetanotherinterpretation.HestressedthatRussianhistory
hadalwaysfollowedapathwhichwasneither‘European’nor‘Asian’
but a mixture of the two. From such ideas came the so-called
Eurasianist school of thought. Trubetskoi and his fellow thinkers
regarded a strong ruler and a centralized administrative order as
vital to the country’s well-being. They suggested that several basic
features of Soviet life – the clan-like groups in politics, the pitiless
suppression ofopposition andthe culture ofunthinking obedience
–weresimplyacontinuationofages-oldtradition.8NikolaiUstrya-
lov, a conservative e´migre´, concurred that the communists were
not as revolutionary as they seemed, and he celebrated Lenin’s
re-establishment of a unitary state in the former Russian Empire.
Heandfellowanalystsatthe‘ChangeofLandmarks’journalinsisted
that communism in power was not merely traditionalism with a
newredneckscarf.Ustryalovregardedthecommunistsasessentially
theeconomicmodernizersneededbysociety.Hepredictedthatthe
interests of Russia as a great power would mean steadily more to
themthanthetenetsoftheirMarxism.9
After the Second World War the Eurasianism of Trubetskoi
underwent further development by Lev Gumile¨v, who praised the
Mongol contribution to Russian political and cultural achieve-
ments.10E.H.CarrandBarringtonMooreinthe1950ssteeredclear
ofanysuchideaandinsteadresumedandstrengthenedUstryalov’s
stress on state-building. They depicted Lenin and Stalin first and
foremostasauthoritarianmodernizers.Whilenotexpresslycondon-
xxvi
introduction
ingstateterror,CarrandMooretreatedcommunistruleasthesole
effective modality for Russia to compete with the economy and
cultureoftheWest.11
ThisstrandofinterpretationappeareddownrightinsipidtoFranz
Neumann,whointhelate1930scategorizedtheUSSR asa‘totali-
tarian’ order. Merle Fainsod and Leonard Schapiro picked up this
concept after the Second World War.12 They suggested that the
USSRandNaziGermanyhadinventedaformofstateorderwherein
all power was exercised at the political centre and the governing
group monopolized control over the means of coercion and public
communicationandinterveneddeeplyintheeconomy.Suchanorder
retained a willingness to use force against its citizens as a normal
method of rule. Writers of this persuasion contended that the out-
come was the total subjection of the entire society to the demands
of the supreme ruling group. Individual citizens were completely
defenceless.Therulinggroup,accordingly,hadmadeitselfinvulner-
abletoreactionsinthebroaderstateandsociety.InStalin’sUSSR
andHitler’sGermanysuchagroupwasdominatedbyitsdictator.
But the system could be totalitarian even if a single dictator was
lacking.FainsodandSchapiroinsistedthatthemainaspectsofthe
SovietorderremainedintactafterStalin’sdeathin1953.
Viewing things from a somewhat different angle, the Yugoslav
former communist Milovan Djilas suggested that a new class had
comeintoexistencewithitsowninterestsandauthority.Accordingly
the USSR, far from moving towards a classless condition, had
administrative elites capable of passing on their privileges from
generation to generation.13 Whilenot repudiating Djilas’s analysis,
Daniel Bell argued that trends in contemporary industrial society
werealreadypushingtheSovietleadershipintoslackeningitsauthori-
tarianism – and Bell noted that Western capitalist societies were
adopting many measures of state economic regulation and welfare
provision favoured in the USSR. In this fashion, it was said, a
convergenceofSovietandWesterntypesofsocietywasoccurring.14
There was a grain of validity in the official Soviet claim that
advancesweremadeinpopularwelfare,eventhoughseveralofthem
failedtotakeplaceuntilmanydecadesafter1917.YetMartovand
xxvii