Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr

390 Pages·1974·43.294 MB·English

by  C. Abramsky (eds.)

ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF
E. H. CARR

ESSAYS IN HONOUR
OF E. H. CARR
edited by
C. ABRAMSKY
assisted by
BERYL J. WILLIAMS
M
ISBN 978-1-349-01727-0 ISBN 978-1-349-01725-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01725-6
Editorial Matter, selection and tribute © C. Abramsky 1974
Chapter 1 © Isaiah Berlin 1974 (abridged ed.
originally published T.L.S. 31 December 1971)
Chapter 2 © Monica Partridge 1974
Chapter 3 © Arthur Lehning 1974
Chapter 4 © G. A. Cohen 1974
Chapter 5 © Beryl J. Williams 1974
Chapter 6 © Eleonore Breuning 1974
Chapter 7 © D. C. Watt 1974
Chapter 8 © Roger Morgan 1974
Chapter 9 © Alec Nove 1974
Chapter 10 © John Erickson 1974
Chapter 11 © Michael Kaser 1974
Chapter 12 © R. W. Davies 1974
Chapter 13 © Moshe Lewin 1974
Chapter 14 © Maurice Dobb 1974
Chapter 15 © Mary Holdsworth 1974
Chapter 16 © Lionel Kochan 1974
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1974 978-0-333-14384-1
All rights reserved. No part of this pUblication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published 1974 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 14384 1
Contents
Frontispiece facing p. iii
Tribute to E. H. Carr, by C. Abramsky vii
PART ONE: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
1 Georges Sorel IsAIAH BERLIN 3
2 Alexander Herzen: His Last Phase MONICA PARTRIDGE 36
3 Bakunin's Conceptions of Revolutionary Organisations 57
and Their Role: A Study of His 'Secret Societies'
ARTHUR LEHNING
4 Being, Consciousness and Roles: On the Foundations of 82
Historical Materialism G. A. CoHEN
PART Two: DIPLOMATIC HISTORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
5 The Revolution of 1905 and Russian Foreign Policy 101
BERYL J. WILLIAMS
6 Brockdorff-Rantzau: The 'Wanderer between Two 126
Worlds' ELEONORE BREUNING
7 The Initiation of the Negotiations Leading to the Nazi- 152
Soviet Pact: A Historical Problem D. C. WATT
8 E. H. Carr and the Study of International Relations 171
ROGER MORGAN
PART THREE: SOVIET STUDIES
9 Some Observations on Bukharin and His Ideas 183
ALEC NovE
10 Some Military and Political Aspects of the 'Militia Army' 204
Controversy, 1919-1920 JOHN ERICKSON
11 Education in Tsarist and Soviet Development 229
MICHAEL KASER
vi Contents
12 The Soviet Rural Economy in 1929-1930: The Size of the 255
Kolkhoz R. W. DAVIES
13 'Taking Grain': Soviet Policies of Agricultural Procure- 281
ments before the War MosHE LEWIN
14 Some Historical Reflections on Planning and the Market 324
MAURICE DoBB
PART FOUR: RELATED STUDIES
15 Lenin's Imperialism in Retrospect MARY HOLDSWORTH 341
16 Graetz and Dubnow: Two Jewish Historians in an Alien 352
World LIONEL KOCHAN
Bibliogrqphy of the Works of E. H. Carr, by Beryl J. 367
Williams
Notes on the Contributors 372
Index 375
Tribute to E. H. Carr
C. ABRAMSKY
A group of scholars have joined in presenting this volume of scholarly
papers in honour of E. H. Carr's eightieth birthday, which occurred
on 28 June 1972.
ALONE in Western Europe, Carr has achieved a position of pre
eminence primarily in the field of Soviet studies. He saw with remark
able lucidity and an unrivalled mastery of sources the unique
importance of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, not only as com
pleting the destruction of the old system - the burial of the ancient
regime - but primarily as an enormous development in the idea of
statecraft. In this process the Revolution consumed in internecine,
bloody struggles some of its leading actors. Carr saw, and sees, Lenin
and his colleagues more as builders of new, powerful, often tyrannical
state institutions, rather than mere ideologues, or nihilists. He has given
a masterly historical picture of how Russia was turned from a back
ward, reactionary country into one of the mighty 'super-powers' of the
world.
For Carr the Soviet State, with the Bolshevik Party as almost the
sole moving element, the driving force of the Revolution, was, and is,
to paraphrase Marx on the capitalist system, 'the demiurgos', the all
powerful creator of a complex machinery of state-bodies. He dismissed
the classical socialist-Marxist theories on the 'withering or dying away
of the State', as mere Shibboleth- obsolescences of history.
Carr has a grand vision of how a country the size of Russia was
moulded, governed and shaped from above. The Party and the State,
merged together, form in his Hegelian view the supreme embodiment
and achievement of the Soviet Union. Everything else was, and is,
subservient to the supreme architectural plan of the leaders, imposed
on the country through the innumerable channels at the disposal of
the State.
Such a vision of history was bound to raise many criticisms, and it
is a great tribute to Carr's scholarship that some of his eminent critics
have come to pay their respects to a man who has so enriched our
viii Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr
knowledge of the most powerful convulsion in the world since the
French Revolution.
E. H. Carr has written extensively on various aspects of European
intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well
as on diplomatic history and on philosophy of history. His biographic
studies on Dostoyevsky, Herzen, Bakunin, Sorel and others are
distinguished by a refined irony, an understanding for human weak
nesses, and a compassion for man.
As a 'man of action' he wrote during the last war many editorials
for The Times, in which he explained to the British public the need
for a better understanding of Russia and its rightful place in the council
of nations after the war. These editorials will be used extensively by
future historians. They will remain the anonymous contribution of
Carr to history.
E. H. Carr, however, will always be remembered for the monumental
history of Soviet Russia. The eleven volumes, so far published, remind
one architectonically of Mommsen's history of Rome.
Carr 'questioned and cross-examined' all the leaders and chief
participants of the Russian Revolution, 'asked them for their motives'
for various actions they had done. Like the illustrious Florentine,
Carr could say that he 'entered the palaces of the Revolution: "and
there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions,
and they, in their humanity, reply to me"'. The responses that Carr
extracted from them form the backbone of the history of Russia from
1917 to 1929. May he soon finish his enormous task that he set himself
over a quarter of a century ago.
PART ONE
Intellectual History in the
Nineteenth Century