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JRL Research & Analytical Supplement -
JRL Home POLITICS
POLITICS 1. SILOVIKI AND BUSINESSMEN IN RUSSIA'S ELITE SOURCE. Sharon Werning Rivera and David W. Rivera (Hamilton College), The Russian Elite under Putin: Militocratic or Bourgeois? Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 22 no. 2, April-June 2006, pp. 125-44 The rapid rise of the siloviki -- men from the military, police, and security agencies -- within Russia's power elite under Putin is a familiar theme. But has the phenomenon been exaggerated? The Riveras argue that it has, especially in the context of an even more rapid rise of men representing big business. (1) The main target of the authors' criticism is the work of Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White (henceforth K & W), probably the best-known researchers of the post-Soviet Russian power elite. (2) In their opinion, K & W define the elite too narrowly, to include only those occupying high formal positions but not others with great influence over policymaking (whether assessed by direct analysis of the policy process or on the basis of reputation). They also point to some quite serious methodological errors in the work of K & W. They have accordingly recalculated the data used by K & W for 786 occupants of high positions. In addition, they have conducted a separate analysis of biographical data pertaining to 1055 individuals listed in the annual "Who Is Who" directories published by the Center for Political Information. Based on the data of K & W, the authors conclude that the elite representation of the siloviki rose not from 11 percent in 1993 to 25 percent in 2002 (as claimed by K & W), but only from 6 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2002. This is significant, they remark, but hardly unprecedented. By contrast, business representation rose over the same period from 2 to 11 percent -- an even more rapid rate of growth. If these trends have continued over the last 4 years, representation of the two groups will now be about equal. According to an expert survey published in the Russian press, (3) a similar shift has occurred in regional elites. Moreover, the level of business representation is higher in the legislative than in the executive branch of government: some one-third of the deputies elected to the Duma in 2003 are connected with big business. Turning to the results of the Riveras' own survey, they find that only 9 percent of their somewhat more broadly defined elite have been trained in a military or security-agency institution, while 25 percent have an economic or legal education. If siloviki and business segments of the elite are defined in terms of previous work experience, it turns out that the businessmen are about 4 times as numerous as the siloviki. The authors believe that the co-optation of the business elite promotes the stability of the Putin regime and at least retards its drift toward authoritarianism. These points would merit a fuller discussion. NOTES (1) Should I say "people" rather than "men"? I think "men" is a better reflection of reality. Women in the power elite are very few and far between; if the term is defined narrowly they are completely absent. (2) See, in particular, their article on "Putin's militocracy" in Post-Soviet Affairs, October-December 2003. (3) Rossiiskaya gazeta, March 17, 2004
LAW 2. THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT: COUNTERWEIGHT TO AUTHORITARIANISM? SOURCE. Marie-Elisabeth Baudoin, Is the Constitutional Court the Last Bastion in Russia Against the Threat of Authoritarianism? Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 58 No. 5, July 2006, pp. 679-700 Now that Putin has a compliant legislature, argues Marie-Elisabeth Baudoin of Auvergne University (France), the Constitutional Court, empowered to review the constitutionality of laws and decrees, stands out as the only significant "potentially independent" institution in Russia's political system. Can it rebuild a balanced system -- or at least impede the drift toward authoritarianism? The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (CCRF) (1) was established by law in July 1991, even before the final dissolution of the USSR. It began work in 1992 under the chairmanship of Justice Valery Zorkin and made active efforts to regulate the growing confrontation between Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. As a result, it too fell victim to the presidential coup of October 1993, when it was suspended by presidential decree. It was restored in 1994 under the chairmanship of Justice Vladimir Tumanov, later succeeded by Justice Marat Baglai. The reborn CCRF was, of course, tasked with protecting a new constitution that bestowed on the president greatly expanded powers. Even within the parameters set by the new constitution, however, the post-coup CCRF acted in a more prudent and self-restrained -- or cowardly and unprincipled, if you prefer -- fashion than its predecessor, taking care never to challenge the president, at least not directly. Thus the CCRF "almost" (as the author puts it) went so far as to recognize the president's absolute immunity to sanctions, advancing the theory that the president had "implicit powers" in addition to those explicitly laid down in the constitution. Using procedural pretexts, the CCRF avoided or delayed consideration of cases in which it might be forced to take a stand against the president. For example, when Yeltsin and the Duma were at loggerheads in 1998 over the appointment of a new prime minister and the Duma petitioned the CCRF for guidance, the hearing was deferred until the crisis had already been resolved without the help of the CCRF. You see, there was a big backlog of cases and the Duma had to wait its turn like everyone else! So it would seem that the answer to the question posed above has to be a categorical NO. However, if we shift focus from the realm of high politics to the lower-level workings of the political system, then the situation looks rather less bleak. Here the CCRF has gradually regained courage and honed its techniques. In February 2003 Zorkin was allowed to return as chairman -- another good sign, perhaps. The CCRF has made numerous rulings in defense of constitutionally enshrined rights of citizens that have been violated by specific laws or by acts and practices of municipal authorities and even federal agencies. These include rulings against the procuracy in defense of the constitutional rights of citizens and of regional governments (subjects of the Federation). (2) The CCRF deemed unconstitutional a federal law of November 1995 that reduced compensation owed to victims of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. A great deal depends on whether rulings of the CCRF are actually implemented. Knowing Russia, that is certainly not something that we can take for granted, and yet the author (not that she is alone in this) does not tell us about it. If the CCRF declares a law unconstitutional, is it promptly rescinded? If the CCRF declares an administrative practice in violation of citizens' constitutional rights, are steps taken to change that practice? My guess would be yes to the first question and no to the second, but I really don't know. Who would like to comment? One remarkable practice of the CCRF -- Professor Baudoin even calls it "audacious" -- has been its frequent appeals to international law as a "secondary standard of reference" (the Constitution of the RF being the primary standard). According to one study, the CCRF referred to international legal documents 160 times over the period 1992--2000. (3) This does not include instances in which it has cited judgments of the European Court in Strasbourg. Certain legal concepts have been borrowed from European institutions -- e.g., the "proportionality test." The CCRF also plays an important pedagogical role. For instance, prior to elections it has issued guidance on the legal obligations of the state in the conduct of elections. Returning to the original question, the CCRF has hardly "restored balance" to the political system. It does not seem capable of fulfilling such an ambitious function. But it does play a significant role in heightening public awareness of constitutional rights and to some extent, perhaps, even in protecting those rights. NOTES (1) I'd like to use "CC" as the abbreviation, but unfortunately it has been preempted by "Central Committee." (2) In the campaign to reverse the excessive accumulation of power by regional governments, the procuracy and lower courts acting at its behest were found to have gone beyond what the constitution permitted. Several examples of rulings against the procuracy are given in RAS No. 34 item 7. (3) Here's the breakdown of the 160 references. International Pact on Civil and Political Rights -- 56 Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- 23 United Nations Charter -- 4 United Nations resolutions and declarations -- 14 Recommendations of the ILO * -- 13 Documents of the CSCE / OSCE ** -- 10 Documents of the CIS *** -- 8 Other international legal documents -- 7 * ILO = International Labor Organization ** CSCE / OSCE = Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe *** CIS = Commonwealth (or Community) of Independent States
SOCIETY 3. LIFE AND HEALTH OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN KARELIA SOURCE. N.V. Predtechenskaya and L.P. Shvets (Karelian State Pedagogical University, Petrozavodsk), Problemy povsednevnoi zhizni i zdorovya molodezhi Karelii [Problems of the Daily Life and Health of Youth in Karelia], pp. 127-32 in Fizicheskoye i psikhicheskoye zdorovye molodezhi izmenyayushcheisya Rossii [The Physical and Mental Health of Youth in a Changing Russia] (Petrozavodsk: Izd-vo KGPU, 2005) The authors conducted surveys of students in the ninth and eleventh grades (i.e., 14 and 16 year olds) of urban and rural schools and in higher education institutions in the Republic of Karelia in 1995--97 and again in 2001--2003. (1) A questionnaire survey was supplemented by the use of qualitative methods such as essays, the method of unfinished sentences, and interviews with school principals. A little geography. Karelia is situated in the northwest of European Russia, bordering on southern and central Finland. The capital Petrozavodsk, where all the republic's higher education institutions are located, lies in the south of the republic, about 150 miles northeast of St. Petersburg. There is a sharp economic divide between the capital and the border towns Kostomuksha and Sortavala, which are relatively prosperous, and the depressed rural areas, especially in the north of the republic. The authors point out that their two surveys straddle the "transition from chaos to stabilization," so they are in a position to assess the difference that this transition has made for young people in Karelia. It appears that they don't realize that the situation has been stabilized, because their health continues to deteriorate, more and more of them are smoking tobacco or marijuana, and so on. The most important determinant of the position of young people -- of their state of health, lifestyle, self-image, leisure activities, prospects, and plans for the future -- is the socioeconomic status of their parents. As economic polarization of the population increases, so does the younger generation fragment into groups with different conditions, behavior, and opportunities. Thus, physical and mental retardation and chronic illness become more and more common as you go down the socioeconomic ladder. Health is poorest in rural schools and at the Karelian State Pedagogical University (KSPU), most of whose students come from the countryside. The proportion of students with chronic illnesses, mostly of the respiratory and digestive systems, is 38 percent, as compared to "only" 10 percent at the Karelian branch of the Northwestern State Service Academy, whose students tend to come from well-off families. The authors attribute the high prevalence of digestive complaints to poor diet. The diet of students at KSPU is unbalanced, deficient in protein and vitamins, and low in calorie content. Students eat irregularly. Many students at KSPU as well as in schools do not eat at the canteen, presumably because they can't afford it. One area where socioeconomic status is not a big factor is the consumption of alcohol, which is almost universal. (2) Only 30 percent of 14 years olds, 15 percent of 16 year olds, and 5 percent of higher education students say that they never drink. Alcohol is used to overcome stress, tiredness, and depression as well as for the sake of conviviality. Smoking tobacco has long been the norm for boys, but in recent years it has become much more common for girls. Drug use increased significantly in the interval between the two surveys. In the more recent survey, one eighth of respondents reported using drugs, usually marijuana. As might be expected, the practice is most widespread in the areas bordering Finland. Computer games and videos have become the most popular leisure activities. Young people are less interested in reading books than in the past. There has been a sharp reduction in participation in public activities of any kind. The average amount of free time available to young people has fallen, because many now have part-time jobs or have to help on the family's private plot. The authors detect a "crisis in social motivation and weak occupational orientation." Students choose their specialization and place of study "at random" or on the basis of economic accessibility, hoping that they will be able to retrain later in a field that really attracts them. There has also been a shift in values, with increased emphasis on material possessions as symbols of success. NOTES (1) Sample sizes in the more recent survey were: Ninth grade school students 405 Eleventh grade school students 306 Higher education students 345 (2) Presumably students from poorer backgrounds drink alcohol of lower quality.
ETHNOGRAPHY 4. RETURN OF THE CHADOR? SOURCE. R.R. Rakhimov, "Zavesa tainy" (O traditsionnom zhenskom zatvornichestve v Srednei Azii) ["Cloak of mystery" (On the traditional seclusion of women in Central Asia)]. Etnograficheskoe obozrenie [Ethnographic Review], 2005, no. 3, pp. 4-19. You have probably come across the chador -- the black "tent" that covers a woman from head to toe -- in the Iranian context. Under the modernizing Reza Shah (1935-41) wearing the chador was a criminal offence, punishable by a jail term. In the early years of the "Islamic Revolution" NOT wearing the chador was a criminal offence, punishable by a whipping. (1) In fact, the chador is only one of many kinds of "body-cloak" -- a term I use for any garment that covers the entire body, including the head. Different cultures have different kinds of body-cloak, varying in design, fabric, and color. For instance, in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States there is the "abaya"; in Afghanistan and Xinjiang there is the "burqa." Nevertheless, all these are Moslem countries and most people, including most Moslems, assume that the body-cloak is specific to Islam. Rakhmat Rakhimov, who heads the Department of the Ethnography of Central Asia and Kazakhstan of the Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, demonstrates how far this is from the truth. Thus, a body-cloak has reappeared among the Khant and Mansi of Western Siberia, whose religion is a mixture of animism, shamanism, and Orthodox Christianity. (During the 2002 census women from these groups avoided male enumerators or wore body-cloaks while speaking with them.) Women wore body-cloaks in ancient Greece and Judea, in Christian Byzantium, in Zoroastrian Iran (prior to the arrival of Islam), and in the cities of pre-Islamic Central Asia. Rakhimov argues that Islam inherited the body-cloak from pre-existing cultures. Indeed, the single explicit reference to the body-cloak in the Koran does not seem to be introducing a previously unknown practice: "O Prophet! Say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble" (33:59). Nevertheless, this verse does contain a clear endorsement of the body-cloak. And while the motive here is one of mere expediency, so that one might argue that women would not need to wear the body-cloak if there were no risk of them being "given trouble," another verse of the Koran does present self-concealment as a religious duty: "And good women are obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded it" (4:34). The author, however, takes the view that the body-cloak is alien to the true spirit of Islam. If Mohammed endorsed it, that was an unavoidable concession to deeply rooted custom. This is to interpret the Koran as a historical document and not the sacred and immutable Word of God. Well, such a shift has occurred in modern Christianity, so why not in Islam? What were (are) the functions of the body-cloak? The obvious function is that of thwarting sexual intrusion and harassment ("trouble") and enforcing and symbolizing sexual modesty, "purity," and "virtue" -- i.e., virginity at marriage and faithfulness to the husband after marriage. Rakhimov questions, however, whether this is its primary function. He discusses two other important functions. The body-cloak is a symbolic extension of the home, thereby maintaining a clear demarcation between the traditional spheres of men and women. (2) Above all, it is a device to protect the wearer, and also the fetus or suckling babe that she may be carrying, against the "evil eye," to which women and children are especially vulnerable. Fear of the evil eye is still strong and widespread in Central Asia; this is one of the factors that make return of the chador a real possibility. The evil eye is envisioned as an "arrow" fired by the gaze of a malicious stranger, who may be a man or a woman. The childless woman is especially feared, for out of spite and envy she may seek to harm by her gaze the born or unborn children of others. Any mention of the evil eye is immediately followed by a prayer for divine protection. An obligatory accessory to the chador was a covering over the eyes made of black horsehair. In Tajik this "eye net" is called a chishmband -- literally, "eye guard." The author suggests that the "eye" to which this refers is not the wearer's eye but the "evil eye" that the net guards her against. The body-cloak, Rakhimov points out, was worn only in cities, where the woman was surrounded by potentially hostile strangers. It was not worn in the countryside, where all neighbors were known and trusted. (3) It is hard to account for this difference on the assumption that wearing the body-cloak is a religious requirement. Villagers were not less pious Moslems than city dwellers. The body-cloak originally came to pre-Islamic Central Asia from ancient Greece by way of Byzantium. Use of the chador was forcibly suppressed by the Soviet regime, which viewed it as a symbol of Islam, in a long and ultimately successful campaign. (4) There are some signs that it may be starting to return. In particular, in Tajikistan the chador is now again being worn by the bride on the wedding procession to the house of her future husband. The authorities do not object to the revival of this custom; in some places they encourage it (5). NOTES (1) Wearing the chador is no longer legally required in Iran. However, if a woman does not wear the chador she is legally required to wear at least the hejab (modest dress and headscarf). (2) Women in Central Asia are reluctant even to take jobs that in Russia and/or the West are regarded as typical women's work, e.g. waitress. Restaurants are part of the male sphere and a woman rarely enters them in any capacity. (3) This is still the case today in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. (4) Komsomol activists even tore the chador off women's bodies in markets and other public places. For an account of the first decade of the campaign, see Gregory Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919--1929 (Princeton University Press, 1974). (5) Presumably, where the Islamic Renaissance Party is in a strong position.
HISTORY 5. KHRUSHCHEV MEMOIRS: VOLUME 2 APPEARS Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev. Volume 2: Reformer, 1945--1964. Edited by Sergei Khrushchev. Memoirs translated by George Shriver. Supplementary material translated by Stephen Shenfield. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Last year Pennsylvania State University Press brought out the first of three volumes of a new edition of the Khrushchev memoirs under the subtitle "Commissar, 1918--1945." This is the first complete English-language edition. (1) The second volume is now off the press, and the third is due to appear next year. The memoirs were not written but dictated into a tape recorder. The tapes were then transcribed by typists and edited by Khrushchev's son Sergei. (Khrushchev had always preferred to dictate rather than write.) As Khrushchev jumped around from one topic to another, the segments had to be organized into a coherent shape. The first part of Volume 2 continues Khrushchev's chronological exposition, begun in Volume 1, into the postwar years, up to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Passages relating to the period from 1956 to Khrushchev's removal from power in 1964 are organized not chronologically but by theme. The second part of Volume 2 focuses on the civilian economy, especially construction and agriculture -- the spheres in which Khrushchev was most knowledgeable and closely involved. The third part deals with the armed forces, defense industry, and disarmament. Here he discusses his dealings with prominent weapons designers and nuclear scientists, including Sakharov. The fourth part consists of Khrushchev's unfinished reflections on relations between the regime and the cultural intelligentsia. In retirement Khrushchev came to have regrets about the role he had played in this area when in power. He was still working on the topic when the deterioration of his health halted work on the memoirs. A great deal of valuable material has been assembled in the Appendixes to this volume. Here we have a long essay by the writer Anatoly Strelyany, mostly about how Khrushchev managed agriculture. Strelyany draws on taped reminiscences by Andrei Shevchenko, for many years Khrushchev's aide for agriculture. Sergei Khrushchev considers this the most valuable aspect of the essay. There are also a couple of reminiscences (2) of Khrushchev's funeral. The authorities insisted that the funeral should take place as a private family event and went to inordinate lengths to prevent it from turning into a political demonstration. The volume ends with the diary notebooks of Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, Khrushchev's wife and the editor's mother, compiled over the period 1971--1984, although including an account of her earlier life. NOTES (1) There have been earlier editions in English, but they were incomplete. For more information on the memoirs project and the first volume, see RAS No. 30 item 1. (2) By the writers Georgy Fyodorov and Anatoly Zlobin.
HISTORY 6. THE WESTERN LEFT AND THE USSR SOURCES. "The SLP and the USSR" and "The Nature of Soviet Society" -- both published in 1978 by New York Labor News The theme of the sympathy of part of the Western left for the Bolshevik regime has evoked a great deal of contemptuous rhetoric but little by way of illuminating analysis. The rhetoric focused on the object (the USSR) in order to pillory the gross errors of perception on the part of the subject (the Western left). The need was always for an analysis that would explain why it was with such great difficulty that the subject acquired an accurate perception. The first of these pamphlets is a rather remarkable document -- a self-critical public account by an American left-wing organization, the Socialist Labor Party, of the evolution of its attitude to the USSR. It serves as a handy starting point for tackling the broader problem. The SLP is the oldest socialist party in the United States, dating back to 1877. (1) Since 1890 it has considered itself Marxist. Later it began describing itself as Marxist-De Leonist, a reference to its most prominent leader and theorist, Daniel De Leon (1852-1914). De Leon's main contribution to socialist theory is the idea of "socialist industrial unions." These unions are intended to serve (in conjunction with the ballot) as a means of carrying through the revolution and also as the framework of administration in socialist society ("industrial government"). Despite the vast gulf between the reality of the USSR and the De Leonist conception of socialism as industrial democracy, the SLP was generally supportive of the Bolshevik regime for over 20 years. It was even prepared to believe that the victims of the 1937 purges had really turned out "traitors." Its breaking point did not come until the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. In this regard it compares unfavorably with the anarcho-communists and council communists, (2) many social democrats, and even the Trotskyists. However, when the SLP did break with the USSR it did so retroactively, admitting that it had been wrong more or less from the start. Here it compares favorably with those Trotskyists, Maoists, and others who managed to claim to have been right both before and after breaking with the USSR, on the grounds that they were responding to a recent "degeneration" or "deformation" of the workers' state. As the second pamphlet shows, the SLP concluded that the suppression of workers' democracy (in the form of freely elected Soviets) and the consolidation of party dictatorship began in the first months after the revolution. Why then did the SLP at first support the Bolsheviks? Why did it take so long to see Soviet society in its true light? And how was it eventually able to break with the USSR as an organization? Pertinent to the last question is the fact that the SLP, unlike Western communist parties, never became organizationally or financially dependent on Moscow. As a result it was also less dependent psychologically. When the Third International (Comintern) was established in 1919 the SLP was interested in joining, and it was in fact on a list of parties considered eligible to join. Nevertheless, objections raised by rival American groups prevented it from joining. In 1920 the Comintern imposed a set of 21 conditions on member parties. The SLP decided that it could not accept many of these conditions and gave up further efforts to join. The SLP felt that the Russian leaders did not understand conditions in the US and therefore should not be allowed to dictate tactics to American socialists. Conversely, it lacked confidence in its own understanding of conditions in Russia, and this inhibited it from criticizing Soviet domestic policy. It felt freer to criticize Soviet foreign policy. One circumstance that shaped the SLP's attitude to the Bolsheviks was very specific to itself. It was intrigued by reports that Lenin was an admirer of Daniel De Leon as a theorist and had been deeply influenced by his ideas. This claim was made, in particular, by John Reed -- best known as author of the book "Ten Days That Shook the World" but also the Comintern's chief agent in shaping the US Communist Party. It seems likely that Reed was deliberately deceiving the SLP in the hope of absorbing the party, or at least many of its members, into the CP. While Lenin was aware of the existence of De Leon and the SLP and had made positive if brief reference to them in a couple of his articles, there were no grounds for regarding them as a serious influence on Lenin's thinking. Nevertheless, the ploy worked. Many SLP members did join the CP, and the SLP formed a favorable opinion of Lenin -- not because it regarded itself as Leninist but because it regarded Lenin as De Leonist! The deception went deeper than personalities. Reed told the National Executive Committee of the SLP that "[in] Lenin's opinion ... the industrial state as conceived by De Leon will ultimately have to be the form of government in Russia." In other words, he was claiming that Lenin shared the SLP's vision of socialism and that the Soviets were precursors of De Leon's socialist industrial unions. Other factors are of much wider relevance. The great appeal of the Bolsheviks to the Western left was that they were people of action. After all the talk, here was a bunch who actually DID something. And of the things they did what aroused the most enthusiasm was this: they had stopped the fighting on one front of the war. The historical perspective of later generations has obscured the central position that the war of 1914-18 occupied in the minds of people who lived through it (or died in it). They called it the Great War and viewed it as a qualitatively unprecedented cataclysm. Only later was it relativized as World War One; at the time people didn't know it was World War One because they didn't know there was going to be a World War Two. So the war was an overriding obsession. Everything else was judged by reference to it -- and that included the Bolsheviks. In the eyes of the Entente powers the Bolsheviks were first and foremost traitors, saboteurs of the war effort, hirelings of the German high command. In the eyes of antiwar opinion they were above all heroes who had halted the fratricidal slaughter. What else they might be was both unclear and unimportant. Here is a sample: "The Bolsheviks have ... succeeded in doing what all the armies, all the diplomats, all the priests and primates, all the perfervid pacifists of all the groaning and bleeding world have failed to do -- they have stopped the slaughter, for the time being at all events, on their front. How much more than this they intended to do the future may reveal. They may have higher aims ... But it is an astounding achievement that these few men have been able to seize opportunity and make the thieves and murderers of the whole world stand aghast and shiver with apprehension." (3) The source is the first editorial on the Russian Revolution to appear in the journal of another venerable socialist organization, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (founded 1904). The SPGB confined its admiration of the Bolsheviks to the single issue of stopping the war. Like the Russian Mensheviks, it did not believe that conditions were ripe in Russia for introducing socialism and (like the SLP but at a much earlier date) developed a critique of Bolshevism as a philosophy of minority dictatorship. (4) Apart from the emotional impetus that initially disposed Western socialists in favor of the Bolshevik regime, there were two factors that made it intellectually difficult (though not impossible) for them to make sense of the new Russian reality -- a precondition for taking a principled stand against it. One was the ignorance of Russian society and politics that socialists shared with almost everyone else in the West. Hardly anyone had even heard of the Bolsheviks before October 1917 or knew what the word (or its cognate, Mensheviks) meant. Western socialists suffered from an acute lack of first-hand information. Remedying that lack was a daunting task, and only a handful of individuals attempted it. International travel and communication in the days before mass air travel was costly and time-consuming, especially for working people with scant resources. Just finding a way through the blockade that the Entente had imposed on Russia was an immense challenge. Most of those who managed to reach Russia, ignorant of the country's conditions, politics, and language, were easily manipulated by the Bolshevik authorities. At the same time, Western leftists were unwilling to trust information from the capitalist press and from groups hostile to the Bolsheviks. It was only much later did academic studies that they might half-trust as relatively objective became available. The other factor was the problem of how to assimilate an unfamiliar phenomenon theoretically. To make sense of new information we need either to incorporate it into our pre-existing conceptual framework (paradigm) or -- if this is impossible -- extend and adapt the framework so that it can accommodate the new information. The latter requires a certain intellectual flexibility and creativity. (5) The theoretical framework of most Western socialists was a simple version of Marxism that was inherently incapable of absorbing an accurate picture of Russian developments. (6) If you were used to thinking within a Marxist framework, you couldn't reject the Bolshevik regime and the society over which it presided on the basis of a "gut feeling" of simple moral revulsion. Such revulsion might well set off the process of disillusionment, but you also had to work out a rationale for denying that Soviet society was "socialist" -- or even "transitional" to socialism, for that would still require you to regard it as historically progressive. But if it wasn't either of these things, then what the hell was it? It obviously wasn't capitalism -- at least, not as Marxists had always understood that term. Somehow it had to be acknowledged as a sui generis phenomenon. A logical precondition for taking a principled stand against Bolshevism was solving this theoretical puzzle. (7) NOTES (1) It was founded in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party. The present name was adopted in 1877. (2) Emma Goldman, for example, lost what remained of her faith in the Russian Revolution in 1921, when the regime crushed the rising of the Kronstadt sailors (My Disillusionment in Russia, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970, p. xli). True, she had the enormous advantage of actually living in Russia in 1919-21, but that does not explain why the SLP rejected her testimony. (3) Socialist Standard, January 1918. For further discussion, see David A. Perrin, The Socialist Party of Great Britain: Politics, Economics and Britain's Oldest Socialist Party (Wrexham: Bridge Books, 2000), Ch. 3. (4) Other critiques of Bolshevism developed by Western Marxist writers included "Lenin as Philosopher" by the Dutch astronomer and council communist Anton Pannekoek and "Bolshevism: Its Roots, Role, Class View and Methods" by the German social democrat Rudolf Sprenger (real name Helmut Wagner). Sprenger's text was reissued in English in 2004 by Redline Publications, PO Box 6700, Sawbridgeworth, CM21 0WA, UK. (5) Another option, of course, was to dispense with the framework altogether. My focus, however, is on those for whom this option was unacceptable. (6) It was easier for socialists in non-Marxist traditions (e.g., anarchist or religious), who had not confined themselves in such a tight theoretical straitjacket. (7) I'll discuss this puzzle at greater length in the next issue.
PSYCHOLOGY 7. BERNSTEIN: OUTLIVING PAVLOV'S LEGACY SOURCE. Selected Works of N.A. Bernstein. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 2, March-April 2006 Ivan Pavlov (1849--1936) is remembered as the great Russian psychologist whose experiments with dogs led him to the theory of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. The unconditioned reflex was when the dog salivated at the sight of food, and the conditioned reflex was when it salivated at a stimulus (the ringing of a bell, say) that it had learnt to associate with food. In the late 1940s one of Pavlov's followers carried out similar experiments on human children, using sugared cranberries as reinforcement. Although Pavlov himself turned against the Soviet regime, his scientific theory was regarded as highly authoritative under both Lenin and Stalin. Starting in the late 1940s, however, there were some Soviet scientists who tried to move beyond Pavlov's reflex theory to a more sophisticated view of human and animal psychology and physiology. The most important of these innovators was Nikolai Alexandrovich Bernstein (1896--1966). A selection of his works appears here in translation. (1) Bernstein was able to do significant work under Stalin. His first book "The Organization of Movements" was published by the Medical State Publishing House (Medgiz) in 1947. He took care to lavish praise on Pavlov for his contribution to science, although he did criticize and even ridicule Pavlov's followers. He merely insisted that there can be no indisputable authorities in science, which must always strive to move forward. In June 1950, however, a joint session on Pavlov's legacy held by the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences placed Pavlov's theory beyond the limits of acceptable criticism. This ruling, taken apparently on the initiative of Stalin himself, was part of the campaign against "cosmopolitanism" -- that is, Western intellectual influence. (2) Bernstein and his fellow thinkers had to await the post-Stalin liberalization to resume their research. The Pavlovian orthodoxy demanded that behavior be explained in purely physiological terms. The autonomy of the psychological realm was denied. In order to "explain" complex behavior more and more "reflexes" were introduced ad hoc. Thus the leap of a mountain goat supposedly involved a relocation reflex, a support reflex, a recoil reflex, a pushing-off reflex, etc. Bernstein argued that animals do not simply react automatically to external stimuli, but interact with and strive to influence their environment. This is, indeed, the difference between an organism and a mere mechanism. In order to catch prey or escape from a predator, for example, processes must occur in an animal's brain and nervous system to model a desired future, program actions to realize that future, and continually adjust the program in response to incoming sensory data. Such processes may, but need not, take place at a conscious level. To the extent that reflexes are involved, they operate on the model of the two-way "reflex ring" as opposed to Pavlov's "reflex arc." Reflexes as conceptualized by Pavlov do exist, but under real life conditions they play a minor role. In the laboratory animals are deprived of natural activity and initiative; their full range of behavior can be observed only in the wild. Bernstein is first of all a neuro-physiologist, but the study of neuro-physiology leads him to the conclusion that psychological concepts are indispensable. His ideas are fully in tune with contemporary Western research in neuro-physiology. And yet the philosophy that guided Pavlov's work, which reduced humans and other living beings to purely reactive mechanisms, is still going strong in the West today, in the form of the "behaviorist" school of operant conditioning established by B.F. Skinner (1904--1990). As in the USSR, the social demand for conditioning, manipulating, and controlling people is stronger than that for understanding them. NOTES (1) On Bernstein, see also: H.T.A. Whiting, Human Motor Actions: Bernstein Reassessed (Elsevier Science Ltd., 1984). (2) Levy Rahmani, Soviet Psychology: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Experimental Issues (New York: International Universities Press, 1973), pp. 59-60. A highly recommended source, though now of course out of date.
PSYCHOLOGY 8. MIKHAILOV: A VETERAN REFLECTS SOURCE. How Is Human Motivation Possible? Life and Works of F.T. Mikhailov. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 1, January-February 2006 The late Felix Trofimovich Mikhailov (1930--2005) was a grand old man of Russian psychology and philosophy. (1) His broad range of interests included theoretical philosophy and psychology, culture, psychoanalysis, and social consciousness (he wrote a thesis on each of the last two), though his most enduring concern was with education. He had a strong interest in and sympathy for educational reform movements such as "developmental education" that seek to stimulate the creativity and initiative of students. (2) This collection of texts on Mikhailov's life and thought is of interest from several points of view. In addition to theoretical polemic, there are fascinating reminiscences of intellectual life in the Soviet period and laments over current trends in Russian education, which Mikhailov accuses of falling back into bureaucratic formalism. I won't go into Mikhailov's theoretical views except to observe that he was (like Bernstein -- see preceding item) an enemy of the powerful tendency in Soviet thought that tried to reduce psychology to physiology. He has some especially scathing things to say about Academician Natalya Bekhtereva, who directed the Institute of the Human Brain in Leningrad from 1970 to 1990. Bekhtereva searched in the neurons of the cerebrum for the words that she supposed to be concealed in them. Asserting that the soul was a material entity possessing mass and weight, she tried to demonstrate that at the moment of death the body loses a small amount of weight that corresponds to the departed soul. There is a long tradition in Russia, going back to the 19th century, of studying psychology in close connection with philosophy. Originally, in fact, psychology was treated as a branch of philosophy. A firm supporter of this tradition, Mikhailov is highly indignant that some of his former students are trying to separate psychology from philosophy and present themselves as psychologists in a narrow professional sense, in line with contemporary Western practice. He calls them "professional cretins" (3) and accuses them of disloyalty to himself, for it is "loyalty to one's teachers [that earns one] the right to play the role of a teacher oneself." I wonder whether he was conscious of any contradiction between his proclaimed commitment to creative freedom and this traditional idea that it is immoral to disagree with one's teacher. Mikhailov is saddened that some of his colleagues want to abolish the teaching of philosophy in higher education institutions. What seems to be at issue, however, is not the teaching of philosophy to students with a special interest in the subject, but its status as a compulsory additional subject for all students. In any case, Mikhailov finds the demand understandable, because philosophy teaching is in a mess. All sorts of specialized subjects -- ethics, esthetics, cultural studies, etc. -- are now taught under the label of philosophy by people who are not properly qualified to do so. Nevertheless, the principle target of Mikhailov's philippic is Russia's age-old "state serfdom." He explains how informal networks of freethinkers waged a kind of intellectual guerrilla warfare under the Soviet regime to preserve and develop genuine scholarship. A center of independent thought would emerge periodically in some institution only to be crushed, but defeat was never total and after some time the process would repeat itself. He confirms that Sergei Trapeznikov, the party official in charge of the academic world under Brezhnev, was an ardent Stalinist. (4) Gorbachev's perestroika initially shook the structure of bureaucratic control over education. Mikhailov calls this the "romantic period." It resulted in considerable diversity within the education system, with different kinds of public and private schools using different curricula and teaching methods. This diversity also had its drawbacks: it led to a lot of confusion and faddishness. But like all romantic periods, this one did not last very long. "The past overflows into the present"; state serfdom is now being restored in a new form by the government in alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church. In the annual state budget, Mikhailov points out, professors in higher education are allocated a single line together with state officials. Likewise, teachers in higher as well as secondary education are paid in accordance with the Table of Ranks for state officials. (5) They are obliged to teach a preset number of lecture and seminar hours imposed from above and publish a certain volume of scholarly work each year (enough to fill 3 printer's sheets). In no other country, Mikhailov naively exclaims, are scholars so regimented! Evidently he has not come across the expression "Publish or Perish." And he admits that the higher-ups no longer bother to check whether professors have fulfilled their publication norms. I am more impressed by Mikhailov's complaints about the functioning of the Supreme Certification Committee (Russian acronym: VAK), which is responsible for deciding whether theses submitted for academic degrees (and already defended successfully) should be certified -- that is, confirmed. VAK comes under the Ministry of Education but its decisions are based on the recommendations of expert reviewers, who do however have to conform to ministry regulations. Drawing from his personal experience as a reviewer for VAK, he argues that the process has become increasingly bureaucratized over recent years. This favors the applicant who is skilled at satisfying formal requirements, however lazy he may be and however mediocre and derivative his work. He may not even have read the original sources he cites in such profusion: no one will be any the wiser. Conversely, the original researcher who has made a real substantive contribution to his field is likely to be disqualified because his work does not fit the standard pattern. NOTES (1) He headed the Laboratory of Theoretical Problems of the Psychology of Activity from 1973 to 1984. Thereafter he worked at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Department of Philosophy of Moscow State Medical University. (2) On "developmental education" see RAS No. 23, item 4. Mikhailov took a rather jaundiced view of the way developmental education turned out: he agreed with the theory but thought that the practice had failed to measure up to it. He seems to have had a higher opinion of another reform movement called "Eureka." (3) An expression taken from Marx: in German, "fachidioten" (specialized idiots). (4) Trapeznikov's formal position was head of the Science Department of the party Central Committee. By training he was a historian. He held that Stalin had made political errors but that this did not detract from his achievements as a Marxist theorist. (5) The Table of Ranks was established by Peter the Great in 1722. Different regimes have revised but never abolished it.
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 9. THE CREOLIZATION OF RUSSIAN? SOURCE. A.V. Dmitriev, "Humor and Politics," Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, vol. 44 no. 3, Winter 2005-6, pp. 64-100. Translation of A.V. Dmitriev and A.A. Sychev, Smekh: sotsiofilosofskii analiz [Humor: A Socio-Philosophical Analysis] (Moscow: Alfa-M, 2005), pp. 543-91 One of the phenomena discussed by this author is the penetration of Russian usage by elements of English ("Creole language") in the post-Soviet period. The most obvious form taken by the phenomenon is the adoption of numerous English words, usually directly transliterated (so far as Russian pronunciation permits) or with minor modifications. Many of these words, perhaps a majority, refer to the business world, e.g.: broker, diler (dealer), treider (trader), servis (service), konsalting (consulting), shop, and indeed "biznes" itself. There is a curious phenomenon in which the plural form of an English word is adopted as a Russian word in the singular with its own plural. Thus, "baks" means one buck or dollar, the plural being "baksy." "Biznesmen" means businessman, presumably due to difficulty in distinguishing between the standard American pronunciation of "man" and "men." Businessmen then becomes "biznesmeny." Similarly, we have "biznesvumen" and "biznesvumeny"! Other borrowings occur in the fields of politics, e.g. miting (meeting), monitoring, reiting (rating), mer (mayor), sammit (summit), forum, konsensus (consensus), paritet (parity) or entertainment, e.g. pop, Bingo, shou (show), disko (disco). Many advertised brand names are transliterations from English, often distorted beyond ready recognition. Who would guess that Blevota baby food is a rendition of "blue water" or that "Vosh end gou" shampoo stands for "wash and go"? Apparently, many people assume that the name has something to do with getting rid of lice ("vosh" is Russian for "louse"). Borrowings from English naturally originate in social circles that are strongly oriented toward Western models, but they spread more widely, mainly through the influence of the mass media. The extent of their penetration would have to be assessed by special research. As Dmitriev points out, many English borrowings displace quite adequate Russian words. Exceptions are those cases where not only the word but also the concept to which it refers is new to Russia, e.g. gender, futures trading. A borrowed word may also acquire in Russia a meaning more specialized than the meaning it has in Western English. Thus, "treider" does not supplant "torgovets" inasmuch as it refers not to any trader but specifically to a middleman in agriculture. (1) There was an earlier wave of borrowings of vocabulary from English in the late tsarist period. These words are no longer perceived as foreign, e.g. inzhener (engineer), vokzal (railroad station). Nowadays few realize that "vokzal" is a transliteration of Vauxhall, an old railroad station in south London. One difference is that at that time Russian was absorbing words from a number of Western languages, including especially German and French. Now all the borrowings are from English. The author observes that the influence of English is not limited to vocabulary. Syntax is also affected. For instance, there is a tendency to shift from "u menya yest" to "ya imeyu" for "I have" and from "skol'ko?" to "kak mnogo?" for "how much?" Could there be cumulative unnoticed impacts in other areas -- in word order, say, or even in pronunciation? (2) NOTES (1) See RAS No. 33 item 4. (2) Russian and English pronunciation already have in common a rather ugly feature that is not found in other languages of which I am aware -- that is, the loss of full quality in unstressed vowels. However, each language does have dialects that lack this feature (Scottish English, rural Russian).
MORE ON ALPHABETS Regarding the origin of letters of the Cyrillic alphabet (RAS No. 34 item 11), Jim Oberg writes to suggest that the Russian letter "tse" as well as "sha" and "shcha" come from the Hebrew. There is indeed a certain resemblance between Russian "tse" and Hebrew "tsadeh," although it is not as close as that between "sha" and "shin." In fact, both Greek and Hebrew alphabets, and consequently the Cyrillic alphabet as well, are derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which is the first known phonetic alphabet. Earlier writing systems, such as the Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, were based on symbolic representation of meanings rather than on sound. Our Latin alphabet also comes ultimately from the Phoenician, via the archaic form of Greek and the Etruscan. There are, however, phonetic alphabets that have origins independent of Phoenician, e.g. the Armenian alphabet. BATTLE CRIES Martin Dewhirst picks up the issue of Soviet/Russian battle cries (RAS No. 35 item 7, note 9): "In fact, what many Soviet soldiers apparently shouted during the VOV was 'Za Stalina! Za Rodinu!' The Rodina may have been perceived by individual soldiers as the whole USSR or as only some part of it -- the 'malaya Rodina' (little homeland), perhaps? This has been parodied in a recent book by the very incisive critic of Putin & Co., Andrei Piontkovsky (currently at the Hudson Institute in Washington). His book is entitled 'Za Rodinu! Za Abramovicha! Ogon'!' Just in case, I will add that I have no reason to think that he is in any sense inclined towards antisemitism." I ordered this book and it arrived just as I was finishing off this issue of RAS. It is a collection of Piontkovsky's articles on Russian and international politics and is published by Yabloko, which Piontkovsky joined in 2004. Very incisive and courageously outspoken, and with a nice touch of grim humor. The title, which may have been inserted by the editor, is borrowed from a battle cry placed in the mouth of a Putin puppet by the satirical show "Kukly" broadcast in past years by NTV. Under sustained pressure from the Putin administration, NTV first toned the show down and then in February 2003 took it off the air (see JRL 4334, May 30, 2000). When asked about the matter, Putin replied that he himself didn't in the least mind being parodied, but it upset his friends. Putin, of course, cares deeply about his friends' feelings. All the same, looking at the affair in comparative perspective, I have never come across this genre of political satire on American TV, despite the obvious fact that US public figures provide rich material for parody. Or have I just missed the American counterpart to "Kukly"? Britain does have a tradition of such puppet shows, starting with "That Was the Week That Was" and continuing with "Spitting Image." I always enjoyed them immensely: they're one of the things I miss in the US. Not only politicians were parodied but the royal family too, not even sparing Her Majesty's corgis. I agree, by the way, that the reference to Abramovich in the battle cry reflects anti-oligarchic and not anti-Semitic sentiment. |
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