World Order in History: Russia and the West

209 Pages·1996·0.689 MB·English

by  Paul Dukes

WORLD ORDER IN HISTORY

‘A bold enterprise…. Much of the thrust of the book comes
from addressing the present Russian dilemma: should Russia
borrow yet another model from the West as to what its future
should be?’
Roy Porter
World Order in History argues that historians’ ideas about world
order have been influential in transforming nations’ sense of
themselves.
Paul Dukes demonstrates how successive historians and other
analysts attempt to make sense of the world in which they live,
often appropriating intellectual ideas spawned in different
contexts in order to do so. Hindsight allows us to view stages
in the evolution of these interpretations, and to recognise that
they are limited by the constraints of the age in which their
authors lived.
Dukes pursues the arguments with particular reference to Russia
and the Western world from the early modern period right up to
the present. He draws conclusions on the state of the debate in
the 1990s, and offers some views as to the way forward for
historians of Russia and the wider world.
This book will be of interest to all those concerned with the study
of history, in particular philosophy of history and Russian history.
Paul Dukes is Professor of History at the University of
Aberdeen. He is the author of A History of Russia (1974) and A
History of Europe (1985) and several other books on Russian and
comparative history.

WORLD ORDER IN
HISTORY
Russia and the West

Paul Dukes

London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1996 Paul Dukes
The author and the publisher would like to thank
Cambridge University Press for permission to quote
from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. and ed.
by Anne M.Cohler et al. (Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought, Cambridge, 1989).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-415-12936-2 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-22330-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-22342-X (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS

Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 MONTESQUIEU AND CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER 14
Montesquieu and The Spirit of the Laws 15
Montesquieu, the USA and Russia 21
Catherine the Great and the Russian ‘constitution’ 29
George Washington and the American constitution 33
Constitution and revolution: Burke and Robespierre 38
2 MARX AND REVOLUTIONARY ORDER 44
Karl Marx: introduction 45
Marx and Capital 52
The Russian Revolution: Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin 57
The Russian Revolution: revisions and alternatives 66
3 FROM EUROPEAN TOWARDS ATLANTIC
ORDER, 1900–22 78
A watershed in European history, 1900–13 79
History congress in England, 1913: speeches 87
History congress in England, 1913: papers 91
From European towards Atlantic order, 1913–22 96
4 SOME APPROACHES TO WORLD ORDER, 1923–62 107
Pirenne and Europe, 1923 108
E.V.Tarle and the USSR, 1923–48 111
C.A.Beard and the USA, 1923–48 116
Jan Romein and the Cold War, 1948–62 123
Towards a new world order, 1962 and after 134
v
CONTENTS
5 CONCLUSION 138
The action, the time, the place 139
Montesquieu, Marx and Western world orders 144
Russian history: alternatives and revisions 154
World history, pure and applied 167
Notes 172
Index 189
vi
PREFACE
This book has turned out to be different from the one I first aimed
at. To begin with, I wanted to consider the problem of the study of
history, pure and simple. Increasingly, however, I took up the
further problem of the application of the discipline, largely under
the pressure of history in its other guise; that is, because of what
happened.
The idea was originally conceived many years ago but did not
mature until after 1985 with the arrival of perestroika and
glasnost. The actual writing began in the aftermath of the great
changes which swept through Eastern Europe in 1989, and
continued against the background of further shattering events
from August 1991 to October 1993 as the Soviet Union broke up,
only for the integrity of its largest fragment, the Russian
Federation, to come under threat. The final revisions have been
made throughout the year 1994, as a question mark still hangs
over the future of that Federation and the other former republics
of the USSR.
No answer is given here to that highly significant question, since
the book has been written by a university teacher who for more
than twenty-five years assured students that the Soviet Union
would never collapse. Understandably, perhaps, I have not
presumed to make any more categorical statements about what
fate may hold in store for the Russian and other successor states.
However, I have attempted to take a fresh look at the Russian past
in its context, taking into consideration not only the impact of recent
years but also the consequent shifts in perspective.
At the outset, I must make it clear that this book is not primarily
about the Soviet Union, its predecessors and successors. Bearing
vii
PREFACE
in mind my original intention to consider the problem of the study
of history, I have thought it of overriding importance to adopt a
wider setting for the study of the USSR, before and after, than
has normally been adopted. There has been the strong tendency
for West to remain West, East to remain East, and the twain rarely
to meet: in other words, for the academic divisions of discipline
and demands of specialisation to keep separate Russian studies
on the one hand and European and American studies on the other
hand. Nevertheless, many researchers in Western fields, not just
historians but also social scientists, have been and remain obliged
to fit the vast Russian chunk of the Eurasian continent somehow
into their global view. By global view, I do not mean an
examination of all the stretches of land and water from pole to
pole, but rather the equivalent of the Russian mirovozzrenie or the
German Weltanschauung. I have sought an approach which
illustrates how investigators have incorporated Russia into their
overall conception of Western world order, which means for the
most part leaving aside Africa, Asia and Latin America.
I have selected two different kinds of world order for
particular attention—the constitutional and revolutionary,
respectively indicating continuity and change. I have attempted
to describe the manner in which two outstanding Western
individuals, Montesquieu and Marx, in turn formulated
influential views of constitutional and revolutionary order, and
the manner in which Russia was included in them. At the same
time, I give some emphasis to the USA, for two reasons. First,
its political culture serves as a measure of comparison with
Russia’s against various European standards, embodied by
constitutional Montesquieu and revolutionary Marx especially.
Second, the USA came to dominate the West in the twentieth
century, especially during the years of the Cold War, itself
becoming the standard against which other states and their
political cultures were measured.
Against the background of constitutional and revolutionary
orders, I also want to consider some of the global views of the
historical profession as it has evolved through the twentieth
century, both before and after the two world wars, looking first
at its practitioners in Western Europe, including the UK, then at
their colleagues in the USSR and USA. For the years of the Cold
War, I have singled out for special attention the work of a Dutch
historian, Jan Romein, more affected than most by the impact
viii
PREFACE
of that great conflict. From 1900 to the 1990s, as we shall see,
there have been several significant shifts in the overall outlook
of Romein and other representative historians.
There can be no firm conclusion to a work such as this, but in a
final chapter I seek to recapitulate and draw together the book’s
major themes. In so doing, my aim is to reinforce the case for critical
scrutiny of the Russian predicament to be accompanied by a
measure of Western introspection. I would particularly like to
encourage researchers both in Russia and in the West to achieve
more fully their aspirations to greater mutual understanding. While
shying away from any predictions for the future, I try to point out
some ways in which we might approach the past, especially
through the abandonment of ‘uniqueness’ in the treatment of
Russian history and by a fuller acceptance of a wider comparative
framework by historians and other academic investigators
irrespective of location and affiliation.
In the course of writing the book, I have become aware of many
problems, for example variations in meaning from century to
century, from place to place and according to the subject under
discussion of such words as ‘history’ and ‘world order’ as well as
‘Russia’ and ‘the West’. I hope that I have made my usage of these
and other words as unambiguous as possible at any given moment,
although I would also argue that complete and clear distinctions
cannot always be maintained: at least, to take the same examples,
the entities signified by the words above cannot be divorced from
our perception of them.
Like all my other published work during the past thirty years,
this book has been completed at the University of Aberdeen, an
institution whose Quincentenary on 10 February 1995 has been a
constant reminder of the necessity to take the long view. As before,
I consider myself fortunate to be a member of an excel-lent
department with colleagues always ready to help and encourage,
and to have found equally willing support elsewhere, mainly but
not exclusively in the Arts and Social Sciences, not forgetting the
Queen Mother and King’s Libraries. In particular, although I alone
bear the responsibility for the final outcome, I should like to thank
Cathryn Brennan, Dr Jean Houbert and Dr George Molland of
the University of Aberdeen along with Professor Edward Acton
of the University of East Anglia and Dr Sarah Davies of the
University of Durham for their most helpful reading of successive
drafts: all five will readily see how much of their advice I have
ix