Why Russia?

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Why Russia?
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• 2 PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNISM
• Communism as a global systemic phenomenon a
  product of, and a challenge to,
• global capitalism
• Communism as a regional and civilizational
  phenomenon -
• a phase in the historical development of some
  countries, starting with Russia

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Global System Perspective
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• Internationale.
• International socialist anthem
• Words by Eugène Pottier (1871) music by Pierre
  Degeyter (1888)
• State anthem of the Soviet Union (1918-1943)

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• Capitalism
• A social system based on private ownership of the
  means of production, in which the main goal of
  economic activity is the maximization of profit
• The main mechanism of social coordination is the
  market
• Guided by the unseen hand of the market,
  individuals buy and sell labour, land, goods,
  services, stocks, information
• The capitalist system began to form about 500
  years ago when the following developments
  converged
• Formation of the capitalist class (the
  bourgeoisie - literally, the word means the city
  dwellers) first, merchants and bankers, later,
  industrialists people whose main source of
  power is money derived from the workings of the
  market economy
• Creation of nation-states
• Expansion of international trade and conquest
  of colonies
• New technologies made human labour more
  productive
• The rise of new ideas social change,
  progress, democracy
• The notion of revolution

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• With or without command
• 4 basic methods of social control and
  coordination in any society
• 1. Directed coordination, or authority (somebody
  plans for the group, gives commands, others obey)
• 2. Mutual adjustment, or exchange (everyone does
  his/her thing, nobody plans, nobody commands,
  coordination takes place through the web of
  interactions between gain-seeking individuals)
• Capitalism expands the realm of mutual adjustment
  the rise of the market system, the power of
  self-interest
• But directed coordination exercise of
  authority, the power of command
• does not disappear. Quite the opposite it
  becomes more effective
• No society can rely only on market-type
  interactions
• Many important social tasks can only be performed
  through the use of authority
• See, for instance, Charles Lindblom, The Market
  System, Yale University Press, 2002, also Charles
  Lindblom, Politics and Markets, Yale university
  Press, 1976

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• Control through the mind
• The 2 other methods have to do with what we think
  and believe
• 3. Persuasion Getting people to act (or no to
  act) by persuading them that they need it, that
  it is in their own interests, etc.
• 4. Moral codes The power of belief, tradition,
  and ethics
• In actual human practice, all these methods
  interact in a lot of complex ways
• Every social system is based on a specific
  combination of these (and probably other) methods
• Some combinations are more effective than others

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• Authority structures under capitalism
• The family
• The workplace (obey the boss, be disciplined,
  work hard)
• The state (whether democratic or authoritarian)
• Liberal democracy is a way of combining the power
  of command with the power of self-interest,
  putting a strong emphasis on self-interest.
• The state derives its authority to command from a
  market-type deal between the citizen and the
  politician
• Ill give you my vote and my taxes, if you work
  to deliver the public goods I need (for example,
  peace, order, good government)

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• Liberal democracy can be regarded as the perfect
  political form for capitalism
• It accommodates the constant process of change
  that capitalism fosters
• Including social change
• Yet, at the same time, democracy and capitalism
• are in conflict
• In the market economy, people are formally equal
  free agents, each after his/her own interests
• But in reality, they have vastly different
  amounts of social power
• The market system, in and by itself, does not
  reduce those differences. On the contrary, it
  increases existing inequalities both within
  societies and between societies.
• The inequality of social power and the control
  over means of production through the institution
  of private ownership gives the bourgeoisie power
  over the workers

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• Capitalism as a revolutionary system
• How capitalism undermines its own foundations
• 1. Market forces, not subject to effective
  control by society, can turn against man
• -- inadequacy of the profit motive to meet many
  human needs
• -- the destructive power of the market (creative
  or not)
• 2. Capitalism, through increasing inequality of
  social power, creates its own enemies in society
  the dispossessed, the exploited, which become
  breeding grounds for movements for radical change
• 3. Liberal democracy enables radicals to struggle
  for power. Whether the radical impulses can be
  tamed through reforms is always an open question

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• The rise of socialism (19th-20th centuries)
• Follow the link The Socialist International
• Socialist movements accompany the development of
  capitalism
• They follow on the steps of capitalist
  development
• Most socialists start out as radical democrats,
  disappointed with the failures and limitations of
  liberal democracy
• The socialist movement emerges as a product of
  the age of liberal revolutions, triggered off by
  the American War of Independence and the Great
  French Revolution of 1789-93
• 1848 After an unsuccessful wave of democratic
  revolutions swept through Europe, a group of
  German radical democrats led by journalist Karl
  Marx and industrialist Friedrich Engels founded
  The League of Communists
• Their founding document was The Communist
  Manifesto
• THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

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Marx and Engels in London, 1867
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Regional-civilizational perspective
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Europes East and West

• The stereotype the West is advanced, the East is
  backward.
• It hasnt always been this way.
• The divisions of Europe
• East vs. West (the Greek-Persian wars,
  Alexanders synthesis)
• South vs. North (Rome vs. Barbarians)
• East vs. West (2 parts of the Roman Empire)
• East vs. West (Orthodox Christianity vs. Roman
  Catholicism)
• East vs. West (nomadic invasions of Europe)
• West vs. East (Western modernization, Eastern
  stagnation)
• East vs. West (the Communist challenge from
  Russia and China)
• East vs. West (new Europe vs. old Europe)

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Europes Eastern frontier

• The belt between the Baltic and the Adriatic
• East European state-forming nations
• Greeks
• Germans
• Slavs
• Eastern Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians
• Western Poles, Czechs, Slovaks
• Southern Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians,
  Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Bulgarians
• Hungarians (Magyars)
• Finns
• Balts (Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians)
• Romanians (19th-century name)
• Albanians
• Turks
• Tatars
• ALL, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF FINNS, GREEKS AND
  TURKS, LIVED UNDER COMMUNIST REGIMES IN THE 20TH
  CENTURY

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• EVOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN STATE SYSTEM

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EUROPE 0001
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EUROPE 1000
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EUROPE 1600
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EUROPE 1900
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EUROPE 1914
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• A 3-way conflict of civilizations for control of
  Eastern Europe. Objects of the struggle
• Resources
• Trade routes
• Security
• THE CONTINENTAL EMPIRES
• Western Christian (German) successors to the
  Western Roman Empire and Holy Roman Empire the
  Habsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary) and the
  Hohenzollern Empire (Germany)
• Orthodox Christian (Russian) successor to
  Eastern Roman Empire (The Romanov Empire)
• Muslim (Turkish) successor to the Arab
  Caliphate (The Ottoman Empire)

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How the East fell behind the West

• Western Europe begins modernization (16th 17th
  centuries)
• Eastern Europe as the Wests defence barrier
• Eastern Europe as the Wests agricultural base
• The West
• Industrializing
• Global trade
• Capitalism
• Nation-state
• The East
• Farming (with pockets of industry)
• Regional trade
• Feudalism
• Empire

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• MODERNIZATION CHALLENGES
• TO EASTERN EUROPE
• Political Independence building modern
  nation-states
• Industrialization
• The agrarian question turning peasants into
  farmers, developing modern agriculture
• Social development
• Building civil societies
• POLITICAL OPTIONS
• Western liberalism
• Socialism of various types
• Conservative nationalism or (later) fascism

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• 19th century in Eastern Europe turmoil
• National liberation struggles against empires
  (Turkish, Russian, Habsburg)
• A few nations become independent
• Democratic revolutions, led by middle classes
• Unsuccessful
• The rise of socialist movements, led by
  intellectuals, supported by workers and peasants
  -
• Suppressed
• Reforms from above -
• Inadequate
• Repression (including foreign intervention)
• Breeding new discontent and radicalization

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• As a result of World War I, all four empires
  which had dominated Eastern Europe
• Russian,
• Turkish,
• Austro-Hungarian,
• and German
• DISINTEGRATED
• The region was up for massive upheavals, violent
  struggles for power, attempts at radical change

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Russia
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• Russia is 1,200 years old
• It has existed in 6 historical forms
• Kiev Rus (9th-13th centuries)
• Domain of the Tatar-Mongol empire (13th-15th
  centuries)
• Moscovy (15th-17th centuries)
• The Russian Empire (18th century-1917)
• The Soviet Union (1917-1991)
• The Russian Federation (1991- today)
• Each stage was a product of interactions between
  European and Asian influences

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Kiev Rus before 1054
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The empire of Chengiz Khan and his successors
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Chengiz Khan
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The rise of the Moscow state
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Tsar Peter the Great, Founder of the Russian
Empire
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• In the Modern Age, Russia expanded to take
  control of most of the Eurasian Heartland
• Gradually, it filled much of the space first
  integrated by the Mongols
• Expansion was driven by
• Struggle for independence and security
• Struggle for control of resources and trade
  routes
• Human settlement
• Imperial inertia

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Coat-of-arms of the Russian Empire
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The State Emblem of the Russian Federation
                                               
                                                  
                                                  
      
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Moscow Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
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The Church of Ivan the Great, Moscow Kremlin
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Tsar Peter the Great, Founder of the Russian
Empire
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Monument to Peter the Great, St. Petersburg
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The Winter Palace of Russian Emperors, St.
Petersburg
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• The question of civilization
• Where does Russia belong?

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• A civilization is the highest cultural
  grouping of people and the broadest level of
  cultural identity people have short of that which
  distinguishes humans from other species. It is
  defined both by common objective elements, such
  as language, history, religion, customs,
  institutions, and by the subjective
  self-identification of people. People have levels
  of identity a resident of Rome may define
  himself with varying degrees of intensity as a
  Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a
  European, a Westerner. The civilization to which
  he belongs is the broadest level of
  identification with which he strongly identifies.
  Civilizations are the biggest we within which
  we feel culturally at home as distinguished from
  all the other thems out there.
• Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
  and the Remaking of World Order. Touchstone
  Books, 1997, p.43

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• A civilization is neither a given economy nor
  a given society, but something which can persist
  through a series of economies and societies,
  barely susceptible to gradual change. A
  civilization can be approached, therefore, only
  in the long term, taking hold of a constantly
  unwinding thread something that a group of
  people have conserved and passed on as their most
  precious heritage from generation to generation,
  throughout and despite the storms and tumults of
  history.
• Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations,
  translated by Richard Mayne. Pengui Books, 1993,
  p.35

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• Civilizations emerge in the course of history
  under the combined impact of various factors
• Geographic different types of interactions
  between man and the natural environment
• Sociological different types of societies
  (rural or urban, degrees of inequality, etc.)
• Economic what technologies are used, how
  productive is human labour, how wealth is
  distributed, etc.
• Mental different ways of thought and belief
• See Braudel, pp.9-23

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• Braudel again
• In every period, a certain view of the world, a
  collective mentality, dominates the whole mass of
  society. Dictating a societys attitudes, guiding
  its choices, confirming its prejudices and
  directing its actions, this is very much a fact
  of civilization. Far more than the accidents or
  the historical and social circumstances of a
  period, it derives from the distant past, from
  ancient beliefs, fears and anxieties which are
  almost unconscious an immense contamination
  whose germs are lost to memory but transmitted
  from generation to generation. A societys
  reactions to the events of the day, to the
  pressure upon it, to the decisions it must face,
  are less a matter of logic or even self-interest
  than the response to and unexpressed and often
  unexpressible compulsion arising from the
  collective unconscious

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• These basic values, these psychological
  structures, are assuredly the features that
  civilizations can least easily communicate one to
  another. They are what isolate and differentiate
  them most sharply. And such habits of mind
  survive the passage of time. They change little,
  and change slowly, after a long incubation which
  itself is largely unconscious, too.
• Here religion is the strongest feature of
  civilizations, at the heart of both their present
  and their past. And in the first place, of
  course, in civilizations outside Europe.
• Braudel, p.22

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• The Russian Civilization
• Geographic
• Harsh climate
• Insularity
• Forests, rivers and steppe (grasslands)
• Sociological
• Peasant
• Communitarian
• Egalitarian
• State-society relations
• The state as an alien force vs.
• The states battle order

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• Economic
• Low productivity
• Underdeveloped market economy
• Property relations
• The dominance of the state
• The state is both a retarding factor and an
  engine of progress
• Mental
• Religion
• Justice
• Morality and law
• Universalism and messianism
• Patience and rebelliousness

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• The Russian civilization emerged at the
  crossroads of civilizations
• Civilizations interact in many ways
• Axes of interaction, tension and conflict
• West-Islam (otherness)
• West-Russia (otherness of a different kind)
• HISTORY
• Russia appears on world stage as a European
  country (9th-13th centuries)
• Then it falls under Asian control (13th century)
• Which changes it profoundly
• Then it fights to
• Regain its independence, own role and place
• Catch up with the West (for development and
  security)
• But the West has gone its own way already
• And Russia discovers that it is different

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• It creates an empire which embraces
• The original Slavic lands
• The steppe which was always a key challenge
• Siberia and the Far East
• Caucasus and Central Asia
• KEY STRUGGLE
• Balkans and the Black Sea
• The empire as a superstate
• Requires a huge army, a centralized bureaucracy,
  an ideology, etc. THE LOGIC OF A STATE
• The empire as a living organism
• Mass base, popular support, integration of
  diverse societies

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• The issue of identity
• What is Russia?
• RUSSKIE and ROSSIYANE
• The state of the ethnic Russians?
• Or the state built on the basis of the Russian
  nationality, which integrated other
  nationalities, too?
• Nation-state or empire?
• Depends on the ability of Russians to act as the
  magnet, integrate, build a larger and more
  inclusive state
• In which other nationalities may be better off
  than on their own

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• So, Russias quest has always been twofold
• Assert its own identity as a Russian state which
  includes a chunk of Asia and a lot of
  non-Russians
• Assert its affinity with the West
• Can it do both?
• VERY DIFFICULT, BUT NECESSARY
• A STRUGGLE WITHIN THE RUSSIAN MIND, NOT BETWEEN
  RUSSIA AND THE WEST
• Slavophiles and Westernizers
• Eurasianists
• What about interactions with others?
• China, India, Japan, Islam?
• Always a sense of otherness
• Which makes for a simpler mode of relations
  (without the complicating impact of culture)

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• When did the conflict reach its apexes?
• 1. The Wests offensives
• Germans (since 13th century)
• Poles (17th century)
• Swedes (18th century)
• Napoleon (19th century)
• Germans (WWI and II)
• 2. The West containing Russia
• The Crimean War (1844-46), Russo-Turkish War
  (1877-88)
• WWI
• WWII
• Cold War

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• In each case, the West was divided
• Cases of Russias triumph
• 1721
• 1815
• 1945
• In both cases, Russia affirmed its Westernness

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• Russian historian I.B.Orlova on the contrast
  between Western and Eurasian civilizations)
• Western
• The classical heritage
• Western Christianity
• Roman and German language families
• Division between spiritual and secular
  authorities
• Rule of law
• Social and political pluralism and civil society
• Representative government
• Individualism and rationalism

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• Eurasian Civilization
• The Byzantian heritage a Eurasian Orthodox state
• Ethnic tolerance
• Religious tolerance
• Spirituality, dominance of
• Heart over mind
• Contemplation over analysis
• Conscience over pragmatism
• Free will over compulsion
• Collectivism
• The Russian language
• The Russian base

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• THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM
• The state was huge, costly, militarized
• Society (especially the peasantry) was heavily
  exploited and tightly controlled by the state
• The political system was autocratic-patrimonial,
  with the monarch being the sole source of
  sovereignty
• The church was subservient to the state
• Individual rights and liberties were severely
  curbed
• Market economy had very limited potential for
  development
• When reforms became overdue, the state acted as
  the main agent of change, usually with limited
  effect
• Society had no legal means of influencing
  government policies the people had an impact on
  the state either by obedience to it or by
  resistance to it (passive or active)

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• What kept the system going was its
• battle order
• NO CITIZENS JUST SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, AND
  WORKERS WHO FED THE ARMY
• The system was designed primarily for war.
• Successful wars kept it going.
• Failed wars undermined it.

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• Grain production in Russia, late 19th century
• 1/3 of the German level
• 1/7 of the British level
• ½ of the French and Austrian levels
• Richard Pipes, Russia Under the old Regime.
  Penquin Books, 1974, p.8
• The issue of the surplus.
• The costs of security and development

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• RUSSIAS DECEPTIVE APPEARANCE
• The image of stability vs.
• The potential for revolution
• Lenins conversation with a police investigator
• Yes, it is a wall, but it is all rotten just
  push it, and it will fall down
• RUSSIAS REBELS
• Cossack uprisings of 17th and 18th centuries
• (Razin, Bolotnikov, Pugachev)
• 19th century
• The Decembrists (Ryleev, Pestel)
• The Revolutionary Democrats (Chernyshevsky,
  Herzen)
• The Populists (Herzen, Bakunin, Lavrov)
• The Anarchists (Kropotkin, Bakunin)
• The Social Democrats (Plekhanov, Lenin)

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• Russias 19th century
• The apex of expansion and the lag behind the
  West
• The pressures for change
• The reforms of Alexander II
• Development of capitalism
• vs.
• Political modernization
• Capitalism was creating new classes, new issues,
  new conflicts and the state was expected to
  evolve to be able to deal with them.
• But the Russian state was not up to the task.
• It was not part of the solution, it was the
  source of additional problems

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• By the end of the 19th century, the flaws of the
  Russian system become manifest
• The gap between Europe and Russia widens fast,
  the Russian system is too inefficient, too rigid,
  resistant to reform
• The 1904-05 war with Japan and then World War I
  exhaust the Russian state and expose its flaws
• 1905-1917 12 YEARS OF UPHEAVAL WHICH DESTROYED
  THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND EMPIRE