Repressive regime as precursor to Soviet totalitarianism
Review of Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes has a principal theme: in the area that became Russia, the land was extremely poor, which restricted economic possibilities and warped its society. His entire book is an application of this theme to the history of the Russian state: if akin to a survey history, it is intended to drive this point home.
According to this logic, about 90% of Russian land was forest or near-arctic tundra, with short growing seasons and poor natural nutrients, requiring deep plowing around long stretches of sand and clay. Most ancient Slavs, who were a seemingly undifferentiated mass, were pastoralists; statistically, every third season was a bad harvest. In addition, long winters forced peasants to house livestock longer while having a shorter grazing season, hence cows and goats tended to be lean at best, emaciated at worst. Moreover, none of the major waterways flowed east-west, severely limiting trade possibilities beyond a north-south axis; land transport was feasible only in winter, when snow enabled sleds to travel. As a result, Pipes contends, Russians were caught in an underdevelopment trap, with low demand acting as a disincentive to invest in productivity: trade, industry, and even “civilization” were essentially impossible.
In sociological terms, this led to several key societal consequences. To pool resources for intensive labor during the short growing season, peasants were organized in near-autarkic communes, virtually without individual property ownership, and bound to their land as virtual slaves. Furthermore, by tradition, a paterfamilias held final authority in peasant communities. Officials and landlords supported this arrangement, in large part because it offered a simple means of control and administration, that is, for the collection of rents and taxes. These communities tended to extreme conservatism and inflexibility. Finally, given the wide geographical separations and local autonomy, the state remained unusually weak and ineffectual until the middle of the 19th century, when rail transportation and communications technology were introduced.
As Pipes writes “The state neither grew out of the society, nor was imposed…from above. Rather it grew up side by side with society and…swallowed it.” This, Pipes concludes (after Max Weber), was the “patrimonial system”, a mix of traditional power and absolute authority, indeed ownership by aristocrats, over both the land and the peasants bound to it. There was “no clear distinction between state and society”, no rule of law, just the personal dynastic regime of the Tzar and his nobility. The purpose of their state was solely to enrich the haves.
Pipes covers the evolution of Russian institutions and rulers in the context of events as they unfolded; while not a survey history, his treatment includes the basics. In the 9th Century, Normans first established a state, “Rus”, in Kyiv, in what would become Ukraine, based on a dynasty that had a common religion. It was a semi-colonial trade organization that imposed some order on disparate tribal societies, exacting tribute. Due to their failure to formalize an orderly means of succession, the Norman state disintegrated into 3 principalities, in particular after the sack of their principal trade partner, Byzantium, in the Fourth Crusade of 1204. One of them, Rostov, eventually became the basis for the Muscovite state.
Princes and their vassals tended to live in citadel-like castles on large estates that they owned, but the peasant populations under their authority tended to be mobile, hence relatively ungovernable. Under them, boyars (local bosses) did much of the administrative dirty work (i.e. tax collection and keeping order) as well as military service; boyars could choose the princes under which they served. Because the property regime was alodial – upon death of the prince, their property was equally divided – this medieval regime tended to weakness, instability, and decentralization. This system was the appanage state, in which the holders of power were understandably obsessed with the aggrandizement of the real estate holdings.
This order was transformed by the Mongol conquests, which dated from 1237. Rather than rule directly, the Mongols established a system of tribute, leaving many of the princes to serve as vassals to them. In effect, the Mongol Khan (as leader of the Golden Horde) established the first unified state in Russia under a single sovereign. If princely vassals failed to keep up with their tribute obligations, the Khan ruled with an iron fist, but otherwise princes were left to do as they pleased, marrying Mongol princesses as a show of fealty. This led to a horrific brutalization of the lower classes, who frequently rebelled. The Nevsky family emerged as the most competent allies to the Mongols by the early 14th Century, gaining the title Vladimir. By paying the tribute arrears of other princes, Ivan 1st then became the most recognized “harvester of tributes” and was granted unprecedented powers over all of Russia as reward for his loyalty; he came to dominate virtually all of Russia’s economy, which he regarded as his personal property. Thus, it was under Mongol suzerainty that the rudiments of Russia’s political system were formed.
In the late 14th Century, the Golden Horde weakened in battles of succession and then collapsed under attack by Tamerlane, eventually forming a ring of Muslim states to the south of Russia. This left an opening to the ruler of Moscow to become Tzar (a Russification of Caesar) under the auspices of the Orthodox Church; their most important role models for governance were the Mongol Khans. The Tzar was essentially the owner of the Moscow Principality, which expanded to all of Russia under Ivan IV (r. 1547-84), the one whose blood lust was rivaled only by his paranoia, earning the title The Terrible.
Over the next 2 centuries, the patrimonial state was established. Social classes were implacably separated. Aristocrats were bound in service obligations to the Tzar, who at any time could confiscate their land holdings and hence obliterate the foundation of their wealth. The clergy formed an influential caste of their own, drawn principally from the aristocracy. Though nominally allowed to “choose” their princes, the Boyars effectively became subservient to the aristocracy, though they could also serve in the Tzar’s council, the Duma. Finally, the peasants were bound to the land and had no rights of tenure, facing debt obligations and responsible for tribute payments in kind that left most of them in poverty; for all intents and purposes, serfs were slaves. Gradually, with economic and technological advances and new forms of organization, the armed forces entered a period of decline.
This situation lasted until Peter the Great, who initiated a period of top-down reform on the model of the “enlightened” western powers. According to Pipes, Peter partially dismantled the patrimonial state. Not only did serfs eventually gain a relative freedom (1862), but the social hierarchy was loosened and the Tsar gave up his monopoly-ownership claims of economic resources, hence empowering other groups. Education and openness to new ideas were encouraged, creating a new elite, yet the Tzar sought to maintain absolute political power. With greater independence and an influx of revolutionary notions, the state lost much of its cohesion and authority. Of course, Peter the Great is credited with many accomplishments as well. He attempted to streamline the state bureaucracy, opening it to a degree to talent beyond the aristocracy and instituting a system of promotion; when he introduced compulsory service, he did the same for the army. Finally, Pipes asserts, he was supposed to have instilled the idea of the nation as a higher ideal, distinct even from the Tzar, which assigned a role to the people as partners in the state. Taken to extremes, this also represented the beginnings of a police state that prosecuted political crimes.
Nonetheless, if the Tzar was not all powerful, the other constituents of Russian society were unable to emerge as genuinely empowered actors. Even with the Manifesto of 1762 that freed the landed gentry (dvorianstvo) from compulsory service to the state, they remained dependent on the Tzar, who could at any time arbitrarily confiscate their estates and reduce them to the status of commoner. They never developed into an independent political force. In any event, relatively uninterested in politics or public service, they tended to concentrate their energies into culture and their notoriously lavish lifestyles. Because they were ill-equipped to manage their estates as enterprises rather than passive sources of rent, the 1861 emancipation of the serfs pushed many of them into decline, amassing debt and gradually selling off their lands, as portrayed in Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard.
In addition, Pipes says, Russia never developed a thriving bourgeoisie, either as an economic or political class. Here, too, the Tzar and gentry retained arbitrary powers that inhibited entrepreneurs from developing industries on the scale that they were reaching in western Europe. Moreover, given the subsistence-level economy, little capital could accumulate to the extent that economic investments were even possible. Russia remained cut off from the western-dominated world economy, which was developing explosively in the sugar and cotton trades and, later, into modern industrial societies.
For their part, the Orthodox Church remained a dependent servant and enabler of the autocratic state, preaching a mix of fatalism and dread. It never developed any doctrine of personal salvation or to preach conformance to Christian ideals. According to Pipes, the church was merely tolerated by the population rather than loved or respected.
Given the inability of Russian society to oppose the whims of the Tzar and the impotence of the quasi-parliamentary bodies that the Tzars grudgingly allowed, the intelligentsia that emerged in the late 19th Century was revolutionary in nature – its members preached various schemes to overthrow the regime, their ideologies ranging from conservative nationalists and romantic pan-Slavic movements to the various socialisms as well as classic liberals. The primitive state of the of Russian educational system hindered the development of more flexible and widespread intellectual movements. Russia remained isolated and locked into polarized ideologies and movements that indulged in crude nationalism, utopian socialism, and antisemitic scapegoating.
Finally, there were the peasants, a full 4/5 of the total population. If they were not protected by equality before the law, the power of their landlords was not totally arbitrary. By 1862, the overwhelming majority were free to leave the land and choose their occupation, however limited opportunities were. In contrast to plantation slavery, they lived in communities with their own houses and were governed largely by an elder patriarch. Rather than developing as individuals, Pipes asserts, they lived with a communal mentality to alleviate extreme poverty; they tended to harsh conservatism and rules-bound religiosity as well as to a vaguely monarchist fealty to the Tzar. With piecemeal reforms and a deadly combination of growing discontent and yearning for empowerment, they participated in the rampages of 1905 and eventually switched their allegiance to Lenin, who replaced the Tzar as a figure of authority upon his abdication. According to Pipes, it was the peasants who emerged as the heart and muscle of the revolution.
In the most controversial section of the book, Pipes argues that from the early 1800s the Tzar incrementally created what can only be called a police state. While certain reforms had created at least the appearance of a system of justice, Nicolas I established a repressive apparatus with the power to arrest anyone suspected of sedition or the dissemination of “bad ideas”; eventually, it was enforced by a separate political police force. Until his time, repression had been widespread but inconsistently applied and with a relatively tolerant hand. From that point, political repression became increasingly systematic and harsh. Indeed, as Pipes asserts, these policies established the institutional precursors to the Soviet State, a prototype of totalitarianism.
In other words, Pipes is arguing that the Bolsheviks merely adapted the institutions that they took over in the October Coup of 1917. In addition, given the weak political institutions of an underdeveloped society, they were able to step into the vacuum with relative ease. This is an extremely useful perspective that, I think, explains why the Soviet Regime developed in the way that it did – into Stalinism. Though in my reading I do not think it was as inevitable an evolution as Pipes implies, there is a lot to it.
This book is a turgid and difficult read. I would not recommend it for anyone but the most serious student – there is no narrative, a lot of very dense analysis, and little flavor for the way that people lived and what they felt. It is a joyless book that is as grim as Pipes was - on campus, I used to see him walking with the darkest grimace. That being said, it is essential reading.
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A friend told me that there is an old Yiddish saying that translates to, "Never wish for a new Tzar". I am interested to know if and how he defines the boundaries of "Russia" (not always the vast entity Putin would have us believe it was). One of the Max Weberish questions that is still unanswered is whether the cultures of all countries are as predisposed to democracy as many in the West have thought.