“Russia is like a tub full of dough”
By Sean at 5 September, 2007, 7:42 pm
I received the Fall 2007 issue of the Slavic Review in the mail yesterday. While flipping through it, I couldn’t help admiring the accuracy of this quotation from Khrushchev that opens Timothy Frye’s review of Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia.
Khrushchev told Castro during the latter’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1963:
You’d think I could change anything in this country. Like hell I can. No matter what changes I propose and carry out, everything stays the same. Russia is like a tub full of dough, you put your hand down in it, down to the bottom, and think you’re master of the situation. When you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains, but then, before your very eyes, the dough expands into a spongy, puffy mass. That’s what Russia is like.
Beautifully put Nikita Sergeevich.
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Translation: Putin isn’t responsible for all of Russia’s wrongs.
Oof – I just looked at the subscription cost for Slavic Review. I hadn’t seen this magazine or might have subscribed earlier. It’s based on salary (do I have to provide a pay stub?). I guess if I’m interested in that subscription I should have Katja subscribe for now … it will save over $80 bucks.
Khrushchev could be wonderfully blunt (if crude). Social momentum counts for quite a bit, it isn’t so easy in any country to change behaviors overnight. I’ll buy that Russia is more rubbery and doughy than most, however. Parts of Russia are like a time-machine.
Sherman, set the way-back machine to 1890. We’re off to the Russian village of Chukhrai!
I don’t see the Russian government making real strides to change that. At times, Russia seems more like a series of interconnected island nations with varying degrees of prosperity, than a unified whole.
I once read it described as ‘a lever where the person at the top pushes or pulls, but the actual effect diminishes rapidly below the boards’…
What Khrushchev said is excellent to describe the situation, but I doubt that he quite understood why it was so.
It is tempting to believe that Russia is destined to always remain the same as if it were a tub of dough, but I prefer to interpret what he describes as being evidence that change cannot be brought about by replacing the net effect of millions and millions of individual decisions taking place simultaneously and continually with a handful of supposedly infallible politicians periodically making the decisions on behalf of everyone else.
In short, central planning is not an effective vehicle to bring about change.
In short, central planning is not an effective vehicle to bring about change.
Except, of course, that government actions, planned and unplanned, have brought about every meaningful social change in the past 200 years (at least). Sometimes the consequences aren’t what they intended – but there is little doubt that laws affect society and peoples reactions to laws create social changes. This is as true in the UK and US as it is in Russia. Russians are just less compliant sheep when it comes to rules, than the English.
But other than that, you’re right.
Except, of course, that government actions, planned and unplanned, have brought about every meaningful social change in the past 200 years (at least).
This is incorrect. To state but three examples:
1. The enormous social change in the UK in the 1960s which resulted in far more liberal attitudes to sex, marriage, and the role of women was not brought about by government actions, planned or unplanned.
2. The rapid decline of religious worship amongst the established British population – a change unheard of in the country’s history – has not been brought about by government actions, planned or unplanned.
3. The increase in average age of couples getting married in the UK, which in turn has a significant effect on the birthrate and disposable income of households, has not been brought about by government actions, planned or unplanned.
I think Wally is probably thinking of the abolitions of serfdom and slavery, things like that.