Between the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945, the politics, economics, everyday life, and culture of Russians changed immeasurably. The changes affected nearly all aspects of life, politics, economy, society, and culture. Russia went from autocracy to socialism, from backward agriculturally based economy to industrialization, from patriarchal conservative family life to increased role of women in society, from a mainly religious and preliterate culture to a secular society. On the international scene Russia in 1861 was one among several major European powers whose poor performance in the Crimean War, however, led some to question its future as a major international player. In 1945 the USSR’s military might was unchallenged from the Pacific to Berlin and many feared that a Soviet-dominated Europe was if not inevitable, then at least a distinct possibility. The booming industry that had made the military victory possible had mainly been built since 1930 and this striking economic growth seemed to augur a future rise in living standards.
It would be tempting to focus only on the differences between Russia in 1861 and the USSR in 1945. Yet the changes were often superficial and many of the problems that the tsarist governments had wrestled with before 1917 remained, in one form or another, at the later date. For instance, while the level of industrialization had risen considerably by 1945, agriculture remained inefficient and a constant drain on the economy. Furthermore, industry was geared heavily toward capital goods and the military with little concern for producing items for consumer use. The state-driven command economy had functioned well in building up heavy industry and military production but had not significantly improved everyday living standards for most Soviet citizens. Political ideology had changed enormously but most Soviet citizens in 1945, just like subjects of the tsar in 1861, lacked real influence over the political system. The Supreme Soviet was no more of a democratic institution than the tsar’s State Council had been. Freedom of speech and publication was even more limited at the end of our period than at its beginning, in great contrast to the situation in most of Europe. On a very basic level, the great-grandchild of a woman born in 1860 would not enjoy more civil liberties and, unless quite exceptional, would live under conditions quite unacceptable to citizens of western Europe or North America. Much had changed, to be sure, but even serf emancipation, industrialization, revolution, and two major wars had not entirely remade Russia.
One of the themes of this book has been modernity, broadly defined as a literate, secular, industrial society enjoying a fair amount of civil liberties, with the majority of the population living in urban areas and working in culture, industry, or administration (office jobs) - but not in agriculture. Modernity is also reflected in a sophisticated educational system and a high level of technology. A modern state is able to defend itself militarily and enjoys influence and prestige on the world stage. In all of these categories we can see that over our period the Russian/ Soviet state underwent modernization of a partial and one-sided nature. True, in 1945 the USSR was militarily strong and enjoyed respect on the world stage, but its victory over Nazi Germany has been at the cost of tens of millions of citizens, partly because of Nazi barbarity but also due to a patent disregard for casualties shown by the Red Army commanders and most of all by Stalin himself. True, the Soviet Union had a well-developed system of university and technical education, often boasting that more engineers and scientists lived in the USSR than in any other country. But the general level of Soviet science, with few exceptions, could not compete with institutions and scientists in the west. Furthermore, the level of technology in everyday life was much lower than in the west and this gap would grow in ensuing decades.
Societies do not modernize voluntarily: circumstances force them to take these painful measures. Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War forced Tsar Alexander II to embark on sweeping reforms that had been thought about for decades, if not generations. Alexander II could not simply sweep away the old order, in particular as he was the very symbol of that order. Rather he had to find compromises with the existing society and economy. Thus serfdom was ended, former serfs received land, but they had to pay for that land, and remained dependent upon the peasant commune, unable freely to leave the countryside. Politically Alexander could not afford to alienate the landowners entirely; economically he had to take money from the former serfs to pay off the landowners, and from fear of social unrest felt compelled to tie the peasants to the rural commune, or at least to restrict somewhat their departure from it.
If in liberating the serfs the tsarist regime compromised with economic realities, in politics there was no compromise at all. While the elective local institutions, the zemstva, were set up to help deal with practical local issues like education, health, and building roads, their prerogatives remained very narrow, and rapidly tsarist administrators like provincial governors clashed with zemstvo institutions. While censorship was somewhat mitigated and the legal system improved, Alexander refused to consider the election of even a consultative legislature. Thus into the twentieth century Russia remained an autocracy, refusing to allow even wealthier, better-educated citizens to participate in governance and thereby alienating Russian society from tsarist rule.
Still, for all the contradictions of the Great Reforms, they did succeed in setting the stage for the first wave of industrialization a generation later, essentially “taking off” in the 1890s. During these early decades of industrial development, large factories sprung up in Moscow, St Petersburg, and elsewhere, and Russia’s growth rate exceeded that seen anywhere hitherto. Hundreds of thousands of peasants flocked to the cities - the communes usually being happy to let them go, as there was a labor surplus on the countryside - and became industrial workers. At the same time universities in the Russian Empire were expanding and thousands were receiving training as physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and other educated professionals. Russian journalism and publishing grew with increased literacy. With these changes came ever more vocal demands for political change, demands that the tsars consistently refused to consider. The wave of terrorism that killed Alexander II in 1881, and a second, more widespread period of violence against tsarist authority in the first years of the twentieth century revealed the frustrations of Russian society at the uneven rate of change in their country.
World War I showed the frailty of Russian modernity. The primary goal of the Great Reforms had been to preserve Russia’s status as a great power, which essentially meant creating an effective modern military. Yet in World War I the Russian army, despite its huge size, made a poor showing. After the short-lived successes against the Germans in East Prussia the Russian army constantly lost ground against the Germans and, to a lesser extent, the Austro-Hungarian army. Only the German concentration of forces on the western front prevented Russian military defeat in 1915 or 1916. The Russian state was also unsuccessful in organizing and channeling patriotism into support for the present regime. While the British royal house could (and did) embark on a campaign of patriotic self-definition, for both personal and ideological reasons the Romanov tsar was quite unable to do so. Instead the combination of poor military performance, widespread shortages of basic foodstuffs, and the perception of treason and mismanagement at the highest levels of the state led to the implosion of Romanov power in February 1917.
The year 1917 was a crucial year both for what happened and for what did not. Tsarist power was swept away in February and the Bolsheviks seized control of the country in October. Why were Russian liberals not successful at holding power once it had passed to their hands with the first revolution? One could argue that they were at once “too modern” and “not modern enough”: too modern for Russia because of their cosmopolitanism and political sophistication, making them want a parliamentary democracy for which Russia was unprepared, but not modern enough in their refusal to recognize the danger posed by the extreme left and in their unwillingness to limit civil liberties as a temporary measure during a time of instability and heightened political tensions. Continuing the unpopular war with an army incapable of winning was also a mistake. One way or the other, however, it seems clear that Russia could not have sustained its liberal government for long: both a lack of democratic tradition and the huge material difficulties facing any post-tsarist government would probably have led to an authoritarian solution.
Russia’s new rulers from October 1917, the Bolsheviks, were resolute in their ambition to make their homeland modern: in a specifically Marxist and socialist guise. At first, however, the communists could do little more than defend their hold on power. The violence and instability of the Civil War (1918-20) did not create authoritarian tendencies within the party, but surely exacerbated them. The Soviet communists, disappointed in their hopes for world revolution, nonetheless saw themselves as possessing a unique truth that showed the correct path toward modernity. While tactics and short-term measures could be debated, the final goal of communism could not be questioned. The tactical retreat of NEP, allowing the economy to recover the devastations of war and revolution, had no political counterpart. Once Stalin had sufficiently consolidated power, he could and did push for a radical leap forward also on the economic front.
The changes of the 1930s were probably more thoroughgoing and brutal than in any decade of Russian history before or since. Millions of peasants were forced onto collective farms, entire industrial cities were built, millions left the countryside for urban work, never to return. In the artificially exacerbated famines of 1932-3, millions of Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Russians, and people of other nationalities perished as a direct result of Moscow’s policies. The Gulag grew enormously as kulaks, “Trotskyites,” “ wreckers,” and millions of other real or imagined enemies of Soviet power were arrested, jailed, and in many thousands of cases, executed. The trauma of this unprecedented level of violence dealt by a state onto its own citizens was to leave long-lasting scars. Arrests and executions made Soviet citizens, in particular those in responsible positions, loath to express critical opinions, even when such criticism would be crucial for improving efficiency. Better to keep one’s head down and not stick out than to show initiative and independent thinking - and risk being cut down by the next purge.
It is difficult, even after several decades, to be objective about the changes of the 1930s. We can, however, see that between 1929 and 1939 Soviet society changed radically. True, most Soviet citizens continued to live in rural areas, a statistic not consistent with traditional definitions of “modernity.” True, life in Soviet cities was often crude, uncomfortable, and difficult. But foundations had been laid for further more positive development and the progress achieved in a short decade was remarkable. We cannot objectively answer the question whether the USSR would have been able to withstand the Nazi onslaught in 1941 without the forced pace of economic modernization in the previous decade. On the other hand the industrial plant created in that cruel decade certainly helped the USSR stop, expel, and defeat the Germans, though at enormous human expense.
It is more difficult to gauge the changes in society over this period. Women played a much larger role in the professions, administration, and public life, and yet old attitudes that men should dominate at home (and not be bothered with housework and raising children) had not disappeared. At the highest level of Soviet politics, practically no women were to be seen. In the professions, certain jobs from teachers to physicians came to be dominated by women, while other, better-paid and more prestigious positions like professors and surgeons were overwhelmingly male. While women had been prominent among radicals in the pre-revolutionary period, only a single woman ever reached the highest circle of political power - the Politburo - in the entire history of the USSR. While women were far more likely to work outside the home, men rarely shared equally domestic chores and child-rearing responsibilities. Furthermore the huge and disproportionately male casualties in World War II meant that Soviet women would have a difficult time finding a husband in the postwar period.
Religious belief probably still played a large role in the lives of most Soviet citizens, but its public role had certainly declined. Official disapproval and fear of retribution combined with the scarcity of clergymen and places to worship made it far more difficult for parents to convey their religious beliefs and practices to the younger generation. At the same time official propaganda trumpeted the impending triumph of communism, a kind of paradise on earth that made religious promises of afterlife seem outdated and false. Clearly, however, the power of religion and spirituality had not disappeared entirely, as is shown by the Soviet government’s decision to use the Orthodox Church to strengthen patriotism during the “Great Fatherland War.”
A key element of human psychology is identity; in other words the answer to the question “who are you?” Identities can be based on a number of factors: religion, locality, nation, social class, education, political views, even sexual preference. Starting with the last factor named, one can confidently state that an openly gay identity was a rare occurrence throughout this period. Both traditional religious morality and, after an initial period of hesitation and toleration, Soviet law and social practice severely condemned homosexuality in any form. The heterosexual family continued to be seen as the norm, though after 1917 and with increased urbanization the typical Russian family of, say, the 1930s, was smaller than that of 50 years earlier. Women continued to carry out most of the work at home, such as cleaning and preparing meals, even while holding full-time jobs in offices and factories.
Social class in imperial Russia depended to a great extent on soslovie, the legal category into which one was born. Thus one might have visiting cards printed identifying oneself as “Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, nobleman” or “Petr Petrovich Petrov, merchant of the first guild.” Peasants of course made up the largest soslovie and the majority of all Russians before the revolution and they would have identified themselves socially as neither noble landowners nor urban dwellers, but as “simple folk,” peasants or poor town dwellers. The Great Reforms weakened soslovie without destroying it entirely, but another identity based more on education than on birth was also developing: that of the intelligentsia. By defining themselves by their education and work rather than their origins, members of the intelligentsia were pioneering a more modern form of identity. For most Russians, however, the most important distinction would have remained between those who worked the land and those with soft hands who apparently (from a peasant’s point of view) did no work at all.
Political identities were not widely developed in Russia before 1917. That is, very few Russians, and even fewer non-Russian subjects of the tsar, would have defined themselves in political terms, as conservative, liberal, socialist, or anarchist (to name just a few of the choices). Still, the educated minority often did think in political terms and defined themselves accordingly. Differences in outlook and tactics between different interpretations of socialism, liberal, conservatism, and nationalism were increasingly debated in particular after 1905. In the Soviet period matters became far more simple: especially after the ban on party factions in 1920, one could openly identify with only one political position: that of the Communist Party. The population was divided between “party” and “nonparty” people and it was quite superfluous to ask which party. The lack of a free press and the omnipresence of the party’s security apparatus made the development of alternative political identities impossible.
Religion was far more important than politics in the Russian Empire. All subjects of the tsar had to belong to a religious community, whether that be Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim. Religion influenced one’s outward appearance, everyday life, even what one ate. Religious identity was thus very strong before 1917 and, despite all efforts of the communists, remained so at least to the 1940s. Before the 1920s, when individuals were often not entirely sure what language they spoke or what nationality they belonged to, there was seldom any doubt about the religion they adhered to. With the spread of education and as a result of antireligious campaigns, by the 1940s national identities had begun to compete with or even eclipse religious self-definition.
The interplay between religion, locality, and nation in forming identity during this period of intensifying nationalism is of particular interest. Modern nationalism tends to emphasize the role of language and downplay religion, but in the Russian Empire religion was the most common factor of self-identification. Slavic peasants in what is now Belarus and Ukraine when asked about their native tongue during the census of 1897 did not always know how to respond. But they had no doubt as to their adherence to the “Russian faith” (Orthodoxy) or “Polish faith” (Catholicism). By the end of the nineteenth century the spread of literacy helped to increase the depth of national identity. Estonians and Latvians, for example, organized schools, choirs, and clubs based on nationality. Poles, Armenians, and Georgians enjoyed a long-established tradition of literary language and national culture, and during this period national self-consciousness spread increasingly beyond just the privileged classes. Still, in many places identities continued to be based overwhelmingly on one’s village and religion and not on some larger imagined “nation.” In central Asia language remained far less important for identity than religion and the distinction between nomads and sedentary people.
After 1917 the Soviets proclaimed the end of any restrictions on national cultures or languages and, once firmly in power, moved to establish nationality as a very major factor in administration and Soviet identity. Before 1917, nationality had no legal status at all and even the tsarist bureaucracy had a hard time determining an individual’s national identity (e. g., to decide whether someone should be subjected to anti-Polish measures). Throughout the 1920s the Soviet authorities worked to codify languages and to divide up the population according to ethno - linguistic characteristics, culminating in the introduction of the passport system in 1932, which required that each Soviet citizen have one (and only one) nationality. Thus ironically the internationalist USSR helped develop - even create - national feeling among its citizens.
Modern societies are usually described as secular; that is, they explain the world more through science than religion. As we have seen, for the vast majority of the tsar’s subjects, religion, not science, gave meaning and order to life. Yet, already in pre-revolutionary Russia, a scientific worldview already predominated among the intelligentsia and much of the middle class. The great cultural gap between educated Russians and the Russian masses (not to even mention the large nonRussian percentage of the population) stymied the development of civil society and made very difficult any quick transition to any kind of liberal democratic rule. The ideologies that the Russian intelligentsia embraced in the generations after the Great Reforms reflect this cultural-ideological gap: on the one hand progressive Russians were well acquainted with European modernity - economic, cultural, social, political - and wanted to replicate this modernity in their own homeland. On the other hand the great majority of the population neither knew nor desired sweeping political or cultural change; their desires were more simple: more land and prosperity. The different worldviews held by the intelligentsia and the masses pushed the former toward radical “from the top down” solutions to perceived deficiencies in the existing political and economic status quo.
Soon after the Great Reforms the gap between intelligentsia and peasant culture and ideology became apparent, in particular during the “crazy summer” of 1874 when thousands of idealistic young radicals “went to the people,” aiming to spread their ideas among the peasantry. The peasants’ negative response helped split the radical movement and encourage a small but extremely dedicated group to embrace terrorism as a political tactic. The terrorist “Land and Freedom” group succeeded in assassinating Alexander II in 1881, but the tsar’s death did not usher in the hoped-for social revolution. Repression over the final two decades of the nineteenth century pushed the radical movement underground, but the terrorist methods of “Land and Freedom” - assassination of political figures and other servitors of the tsarist state - were embraced in the early twentieth century by the Socialist Revolutionary party. Even more significantly much of the middle-class intelligentsia refused to condemn violent attacks on tsarist ministers, seeing them as a means of forcing the tsarist state to compromise with society and agree to political reforms.
The acceptance of terrorist violence against the state by a significant part of educated Russian society reflects their impatience with the pace of modernization in Russia as well as the failure of the tsarist government in co-opting the middle class. The noncondemnation of violence was also based on a firm belief in the immorality of the present regime based as it was on privilege (by birth, not accomplishment), tradition, and autocracy. Perhaps if the last two tsars had been men of broader vision and understanding, Russian history would have taken a different turn. And yet it is difficult to see an entirely peaceful transition from autocracy to even limited democratic rule. The impatience for political change (and even more, the kind of change) among the intelligentsia did not find broad support among the masses, and the tsarist regime was strong enough to defend itself from liberal demands. Strong enough, that is, until the crisis of World War I.
Tsarism collapsed mainly from internal weaknesses and its broad lack of support in early 1917. The unfortunate Provisional Government that ruled Russia - after a fashion - from February to October 1917 demonstrated very well the strengths and weaknesses of the intelligentsia. These were sincerely liberal men in an exceedingly illiberal situation. Saddled with an unpopular war, lacking a functioning political system, and unsure of their own political legitimacy, it was perhaps inevitable that they would be swept away by more ruthless political actors. The Bolsheviks certainly did not lack ruthlessness, but even they found that the political exigencies of the Civil War period pushed them toward more radical political and economic policies than they would otherwise have adopted. Thus by the early 1920s Soviet Russia - soon to be the USSR - was a one-party state in which political expression was severely restricted and where the economy was overwhelmingly in the hands of the state.
The Bolsheviks exhibited one familiar characteristic of the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia - their ideology foresaw sweeping, radical change in the country whether the population wanted it or not. Marxism as interpreted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was by definition the most progressive ideology for human development; thus any opposition to it could only be explained by ignorance or evil intentions. The economic and cultural development of the USSR from the 1920s to 1945 was impressive indeed, but throughout the period (and indeed all the way to “the end” in 1992), the party never quite trusted the Soviet people to make its own decisions or influence its own future. In any case the brutality of collectivization and crash industrialization in the 1930s, combined with the millions of arrests of real or suspected “enemies” in the same decade, did little to win mass support, though it was effective in stifling dissent. At the same time the radical changes of the 1930s created a cadre of communists who firmly believed that the present dislocations and even violence were but the birthing pains of a new and better world. In 1945 they would point to the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany as vindication for the painful changes of the 1930s.
The world changed enormously between 1861 and 1945, perhaps nowhere more obviously than in the field of technology and everyday life. In 1861 railroads had only begun to link together the vast country; in 1862 Moscow and St Petersburg were linked up to western European railroad networks through Warsaw. By 1914 one could travel by rain from one end of the empire to the other, from Helsinki to Moscow, across the Urals and through Siberia, and on to the Pacific Ocean. Not just the well-to-do, but growing numbers of common people took journeys by train; it became common for young people to go to the city to look for work, and then return bringing town fashions and ways of thinking. The railroad also aided permanent migration such as that of thousands of land-hungry peasants from European Russia and Ukraine to Siberia.
Changes in technology did not immediately have a great impact on the lives of most inhabitants of the Russian Empire, who continued for the most part to live in small peasant huts, eat the same meager diet, and amuse themselves with games and songs that would have been familiar to their grandparents. By the late nineteenth century, however, technological advances had begun to penetrate even to the countryside. Even more significantly more and more peasants had spent at least some time in towns and came home with stories - not always believable for the folks back home - about multistory buildings, elegant shops, exotic foods, even trams and automobiles. True, it was a rare village that had electricity, but increasing numbers of peasants had at least seen electrical lighting in towns. Even if most Russians continued to subsist on porridge and bread, the quintessentially Russian samovar had made its way to the village and even peasants regularly drank tea with sugar - a practice far less common in the first half of the nineteenth century. Clothing changed, too. By the late nineteenth century few Russians spun their own cloth, finding manufactured material both cheaper and more attractive.
Technological change meant that human and animal power was increasingly - if slowly - being replaced by machine power. Trains took the place of horse-drawn stages, though well into the twentieth century one would have to rely on a horse-drawn carriage to get to the station. In cities workers made their way to work first on foot, then in streetcars pulled by horses, then in electric trams, and finally in autobuses powered by the internal combustion engine. Throughout the period covered in this book - indeed, in many ways to the end of the twentieth century - automobiles were luxury items reserved for the elite, but by the early twentieth century in larger cities of the Russian Empire cars were no longer rare. On a more practical level, tractors and harvesting machines (e. g., from the American firm International Harvester) could be purchased in Russia, though only a few landlords had sufficient land and property to make them practical. More modestly bicycles - Russian still uses the old-fashioned word velocipede - made their way to Russia, partly as practical machines for transportation but even more as a means of diversion and sport.
Some of these new machines put humans out of work - for example, trains reduced the need for long distance coach drivers - but even more jobs were created by them. Telegraph offices required trained operators (nearly always men), telephone switchboards - direct dialing would come much later - needed operators (usually young women). Department stores that opened in middlesized and larger towns sought staff that dressed and spoke “properly” and yet
Could subsist on a quite modest wage. Office jobs expanded and by the early twentieth century the typewriter was ubiquitous and usually “operated” by a young woman.
The first three decades of Soviet rule continued these technological advances or, more precisely, took the technology of the pre-1917 period and applied it more broadly throughout the country. The devastation of World War I, famine, and the Civil War stymied the development and spread of technology, but this process resumed again in the 1920s and 1930s. While the hugely expanding Soviet cities of the 1930s would have seemed primitive to westerners, for many of their inhabitants, fresh from the countryside, they seemed amazingly modern, with indoor plumbing and electricity. Rural modernization lagged far behind, but at the same time increasing numbers of tractors and harvesters were being delivered to the countryside by the end of our period. A mixture of old and new characterized the USSR in 1945: on the one hand more and more Soviet citizens were experiencing miracles of modern technology like automobiles, electric light, telephones, and running water. On the other hand, for many collective farmers these advances remained far away and for many city dwellers forced to share a single room with several families, any talk of technological advances would have seemed absurd.
Technological change had its most radical effect, perhaps, on the military. Weapons, tactics, military training changed utterly from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Armies grew in size and the needed weapons and ammunition became much more costly. The demands of a modern military force was, as we have seen, one of the main motivations behind the Great Reforms. During World War I the financial demands of fighting a modern war helped bring down the tsarist state. The crash industrialization program of the 1930s was often justified as necessary not just to improve living standards, but also to prevail in the case of a war. World War I had brought onto the scene numerous new technologies of war, from poison gas to airplanes to tanks, that would be used to even more deadly effect in World War II. Some of the weapons developed and used by the USSR during World War II, such as the Katyusha rocket launcher and T-34 medium tank, were recognized as among the best available. Thus the USSR also contributed to military technology in the 1940s.
In closing, we return to a question frequently asked about Russia’s historical development from the late imperial through the Soviet to our own days: Why did Russia not develop into a prosperous, free, and democratic country in this period? First of all, we must note that the question is rather unfair: Why should Russia necessarily follow the historical path of Britain or the USA? Still, given the success of economic and political transformation in the twentieth century in countries as diverse as South Korea, Germany, Japan, and Chile, the question is not entirely without merit. To start with the obvious: Russia in the twenty-first century is arguably more prosperous and free - if not precisely democratic in a western sense - than at any time in its history. The question then becomes, why did developments in Russia in these fields lag behind, say, Germany or Spain? Let us consider some political, cultural-sociological, and economic factors that may suggest tentative answers to these questions.
Politically Russia was more conservative than any other European state in the nineteenth century. Only in 1905 was the tsar forced to issue a kind of constitution (which he resolutely refused to acknowledge as such) and allow the creation of a legislature (whose functioning he consistently stymied). During the scant 10 years of its existence, the State Duma and the tsar s government were nearly constantly at loggerheads; perhaps if Peter Stolypin had not been assassinated in 1911, he could have developed a modus vivendi with the legislature. In any case most Russians were unimpressed by the Duma’s activity, and in the one fairly free election in Russia in the early twentieth century - for the Constituent Assembly, held in late November 1917 (o. s.) - two-thirds of the total vote went to parties (the Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks) who were hardly wedded to the principles of western-style democracy. In any case the ruling Bolsheviks - whether led by Lenin or Stalin - did not embrace the rule of law or parliamentary niceties, basing their vision of a future Soviet Russia on their own revision of Marx’s historical-sociological teleology. The violence of collectivization and the first Five-Year Plans, exacerbated by the political purges of the late 1930s, did much to spread fear and suppress independent expression - or even thought. In general the USSR did everything to control society rather than allow the development of an autonomous civil society along western lines. The mass arrests of the 1930s served as a reminder of the dangers of not following the party line.
“Political culture” is an imprecise and risky term that runs the risk of trotting out national stereotypes in the place of enlightenment. “Russians” do not all think the same way, nor were all (or even the majority) of the tsar’s subjects and Soviet citizens Russian by ethnicity or language. Still, some comments may be hazarded. First of all in the period 1861-1945 there was just over a decade of semimodern politics in the sense of parliamentary elections, parties, and fairly open political debate. Even in 1917 the majority of Russians (and other subjects of the tsar) were illiterate, though in local (not national, much less international) terms, and had little conception of the rule of law or the workings of parliamentary democracy. For the great majority, simply keeping body and soul together remained a struggle; their lives were guided by practical issues and religious faith. To be sure, given a generation or two of growing education and prosperity, there is every reason to believe that Russian society might have developed a functioning civil society and democratic order. But this period of peaceful development was never given to Russia in the first half of the twentieth century: the destruction of World War I and Civil War was followed by a brief decade of relative peace before the upheavals of collectivization and crash industrialization, followed closely by the crushing exertions and devastations of World War II. Peace and prosperity may not be an absolute prerequisite for democratic development, but severe economic, political, and military upheaval are seldom auspicious conditions under which to build democratic institutions.
Economically Russia was also at a disadvantage when compared to other major powers. The country’s size is only apparently a positive factor: for most practical purposes, the long borders meant having to expend valuable resources on defense and the great distances made it difficult and expensive to govern the country. These distances also made trade more difficult; for many farmers not close to a rail line it simply made no economic sense to produce more than they could consume. And Russia was much poorer than any of the western powers; indeed by some measures poorer than Italy and Spain circa 1900. Russia lacked domestic capital and investment to industrialize and had to rely to a significant measure on foreign capital in its first industrialization spurt of the 1890s. The poverty of most Russians also meant that the domestic market was underdeveloped: even if they wanted more goods, they usually lacked the means to purchase them.
When, after revolution, Civil War, and NEP, the communists got around to launching their industrialization of the USSR, their priorities were quite different from that of most liberal economists - or consumers. Not clothing, tools, or other everyday items but heavy machinery for further industrialization and military production received the greatest impetus. Thus from the start Soviet industrialization saw the everyday citizen and consumer - if at all - as a secondary issue. Soviet industrialization was first and foremost designed to serve the needs of the state. While this kind of emphasis may have helped the USSR win World War II (though this is also debatable), it undoubtedly saddled the country with inflexible and bureaucratic industrial plants that had little reason to respond to consumer desires or to adopt new technologies. Looking ahead to the later part of the twentieth century, this emphasis on heavy industry, huge factories, and central planning made the USSR unable to develop or take advantage of computer technology. After 1992 the post-Soviet Russian economy had to scramble to make up these lost decades.
In the end, though, history is about what happened - not what should or could have taken place. In the 84 years from the emancipation of the serfs and the end of World War II, Russia changed enormously. In 1861 westerners tended to see the country as backward, even barbaric, and barely European. In 1945 the USSR had defeated Europe’s most dynamic economy, Germany, and was one of only two world superpowers. Illiteracy was by 1945 mainly a thing of the past and the
USSR was training more scientists and engineers than any other state. While economic conditions lagged behind western norms, millions of Soviet citizens could discern significant material improvement in the past decades and - more importantly - had great hopes that prosperity would grow rapidly in the postwar years. As for political freedoms, it was also hoped that the defeat of the fascist enemy would allow the Soviet state to lessen restrictions on public expression, which had to some extent already been done during the war itself. Perhaps the exertions and misfortunes of the 1930s, sufferings during the war itself, and victory over the Nazis would allow the USSR to become a less repressive and most prosperous country? But the answer to that question, and that fascinating story, belongs to another book.
World History
