The Making of Modern Russia

542 Pages·1983·51.167 MB·English

by  Lionel Kochan, Richard Abraham (auth.)

THE MAKING OF MODERN RUSSIA
Also by Lionel Kochan
RUSSIA AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
ACTON ON HISTORY
THE STRUGGLE FOR GERMANY, 1914-1945
RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION, 1890-1918
THE JEWS IN SOVIET RUSSIA SINCE 1917 (editor)
THE JEW AND HIS HISTORY
THE MAKING OF
MODERN RUSSIA
LIONEL KOCHAN
AND
RICHARD ABRAHAM
Second Edition
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-17055-5 ISBN 978-1-349-17053-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17053-1
© Lionel Kochan 1962
© Lionel Kochan and Richard Abraham 1983
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1983 978-0-333-35189-5
All rights reserved. For information write:
st. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1983
First published by Jonathan Cape 1962
Published in Pelican Books 1963
Reprinted 1965, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974,
1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982
Second edition published by
St. Martin's Press 1983
ISBN 978-0-312-50703-9
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kochan, Lionel.
The making of modern Russia
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Soviet Union - History. I. Abraham, Richard.
II. Title
DK41.K68 1983 947 82-23079
ISBN 978-0-312-50703-9
TO
NICK, ANNA AND
BENJAMIN
AND TO
SHARON, JULIA, CLAIRE
AND MARK
Contents
Foreword to the Second Edition 9
The Rise and Fall of Kiev Rus 11
2 The Mongol Conquest and the Rise of Muscovy 22
3 The Formation of a National State 29
4 Ivan the Terrible and the Birth of Russian Autocracy 41
5 The Time of Troubles 60
6 The Growth of Absolutism: The Early Romanovs 73
7 Expansion and Bureaucracy: The Age of Peter the Great 101
8 The Age of the Nobility 126
9 Liberators and Gendarmes 148
10 Reform and Assassination 180
II Dress Rehearsal for Revolution 220
12 Forebodings, 1881-1917 256
13 From Revolution to War 264
14 The Collapse of the Tsarist Order 281
15 The Bolsheviks Conquer Power 305
16 New Economic Policy, Nomenklatura and
the Rise of Stalin 338
17 The Second Revolution: 1928-33 351
18 The Great Retreat and the Great Terror 375
19 The Revolution and the World 385
20 The War and the Cold War 423
21 Leaders and Dissidents 441
22 Mature Socialism: Promise and Reality 455
23 'The Stronghold Sure' 479
Epilogue: The Eternal Flame 503
Further Reading 513
Index 527
Maps
1 Waterways of Eastern Europe 13
2 Kiev Rus at its Height, and its Chief Enemies 23
3 The Growth of Muscovy, 1300-1584 35
4 Russian Westward and South-Westward Expansion in the
Reign of Catherine the Great 139
5 The Russian Empire in 1914 252-3
6 The Soviet Union 1930-50 424-5
Foreword to the Second Edition
This book was first published more than twenty years ago. For
this new edition the original text has been revised and several
entirely new chapters added to bring the book up to date. This has
very largely been the work of Richard Abraham, a former pupil of
mine whom I am happy to welcome as co-author. The text, as
revised, has been edited by us jointly.
New times bring new interests. A number of themes that seemed
dormant in the Russia of 1960 have acquired a new urgency.
This applies in particular to the national minorities and Russia's
relations with Islam. The Chinese cultural revolution and Soviet
imports of western technology during the 1970s have led to a
reconsideration of precedents in earlier Soviet history. World-wide
interest in the history of women has begun to alter our perceptions
of Russian social history, though this process is still far from
complete. Greater international contact has led to much greater
awareness of the details of Russian political culture since the 1930s
and has prompted a reconsideration of the sources of that culture
in the Russian past and in Marxism. Historians have had to face
the demands of sociologists for greater conceptual rigour. The
teaching of history in Britain has also followed the American
precedent in introducing historiographical controversy at a some
what earlier stage: These are some of the factors which have
affected our revision of this book.
We would like to thank John Biggart of the University of East
Anglia for his criticisms of the final chapters of the book; he is not
to be blamed for such faults as remain. We are also deeply indebted
to Wendy Abraham for making this work possible and for pro
ducing most of the final typescript.
LIONEL KOCHAN
CHAPTER 1
The Rise and Fall of Kiev Rus
The formative centuries of Russian history had their setting in a
vast exposed plain, stretching from Eastern Europe to central
Siberia. To the north and north-east, the White Sea and the Arctic
Ocean formed the boundary. To the south lay the Black Sea, the
Caspian, and the Caucasus mountains. The Urals are no kind of
climatic or even physical barrier. Nowhere does their altitude
exceed 6,000 feet. They rise from gradual foothills to a mean
altitude of some 1,500 feet. Numerous valleys and passes make
transit easy, both eastwards and westwards. Where does Europe
end? Where does Asia begin? It is impossible to say. It is this
geographical indeterminacy that helps to account for the perennial
question: does Russia belong to Europe or to Asia, or does it
form some complex world of its own?
The distinctive features of the plain are the uplands that form
the watersheds of the area's river system. The Valdai Hills, for
example, some 200 miles north-west of Moscow, are nowhere
more than a thousand feet above sea-level. Yet they are the source
of such major rivers as the Western Dvina, flowing into the Baltic;
the Dnieper, flowing into the Black Sea; and the Volga, the greatest
of all, which empties into the Caspian. These rivers and their
tributaries linked the territory they watered to the countries
beyond the seas. Portages connected one system with the next. It
was at strategic points on these interlocking routes that the first
Slav towns developed - Kiev, Novgorod, Polotsk, Chernigov,
Smolensk. In the fourth century B.C., Herodotus already knew the
Dnieper as 'the most productive river ... in the whole world,
excepting only the Nile ... It has upon its banks the loveliest and
most excellent pasturage for cattle; it contains abundance of the
most delicious fish ... the richest harvests spring up along its
course and, where the ground is not sown, the heaviest crops of
grass .. .'
This describes, of course, the fertile southern reaches of the