The 3 March issue of the Nation has two reviews of four recent books on Soviet history. The first review, “The Ice Forge,” written by Jochen Hellbeck, examines Lynne Viola’s Unknown Gulag and Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers. Viola’s book chronicles the deportation of Soviet “kulaks” during collectivization. About it Hellbeck writes, “The Unknown Gulag, is an indictment of the utopian folly and criminal neglect of Soviet officials, and a moving account of human suffering.”
Similarly, Figes text is an exploration into private life under Stalin’s rule. “Reading The Whisperers,” Hellbeck states, “one comes away with a powerful sense that stigmatization and self-reinvention were central, indeed defining, attributes of the Soviet experience for many Russians of rural as well as urban backgrounds.” Figes has set up a website for the book which allows visitors to access the many interview he had conducted for his study. Despite a few translated interviews, unfortunately the bulk of them remain in Russian making audience access is limited. One can only hope that Figes will have the funds and desire to translate more of them.
I think this observation by Hellbeck is quite interesting:
As I read the interview transcripts on Figes’s website, I was struck by how, in at least a few cases, the subjects appear to have been treated to a rather aggressive form of questioning about their thoughts and feelings in Stalin’s time. Yet one interviewee, Dmitry Streletsky, would not yield to these pressures and insisted on his own, decidedly moral, reading of his life under Stalin. Streletsky could have leapt from the pages of Lynne Viola’s book. He was born into a family of peasants who were persecuted as kulaks and exiled to a special settlement in the Urals. The death rate in the settlement was staggering. Streletsky relates how his single most important desire, to prove he was a Soviet citizen like everyone else, was constantly impeded. The Memorial worker interviewing Streletsky understands this to mean that he was driven by a fear of punishment:
Q: Did you fear that they would punish you [for your kulak origins]?
A: There was shame, and there was my conscience, it wasn’t just about the punishment, but about these things.
Q: But you also feared that they might punish you?
A: Who knows? I had doubts, yes doubts. I didn’t feel fear,
Q: And that they would punish you, right?
A: That they would punish me and all the rest. Fire me from work….A few sentences later Streletsky’s interview partner returns to the same subject: “Tell me, please, what or whom did you fear more, the NKVD or the commander [of the settlement]? Were you afraid?” Streletsky’s response: “Listen, I didn’t feel any fear.
Streletsky then talks about how he dreamed of joining the Communist Party throughout the years of his exile. When he describes his disappointment about being turned down for party membership in 1952, his voice shakes with emotion, the transcript notes. The exchange between Streletsky and his incredulous interrogator is revealing, for it discloses not only Streletsky’s moral reading of his Soviet experience but also the gap that lies between him and the interviewer, who adheres to a cynical view of Communism more characteristic of younger generations of Russians.
In the second review, “Revolutionary States,” veteran Soviet scholar Ronald Suny tackles Alexander Rabinowitch’s The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks in Power is the third in trilogy of arguably the best scholarly study of the Russian Revolution. Among Rabinowitch’s many themes, Suny notes that the central issue in this volume is: “Why did a democratic revolution based on grassroots councils and committees turn into a dictatorship that employed state terror against its opponents, real and imagined, within months of its coming to power?” A haunting question indeed.
The second book subject to Suny’s examination is Shelia Fitzpatrick’s Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia. Tear Off the Masks!, the only of the four books featured which I’ve read, is a collection of articles that Fitzpatrick has published over the last fifteen years on the subject of imposture, denunciation, social identity, and coping in 1930s Soviet Russia. It is this thematic concentration that allows Suny to conclude from Fitzpatrick’s fifteen articles that her notion of the “quintessential Soviet” is “a shrewd manipulator able to adapt to shifting opportunities, maneuver through ever-present dangers and “con” the authorities when necessary.” It is this notion of Soviet citizens as ultimately conscious, rational individuals who always knew what they wanted and how to get it is where I part with her text. In parts, Fitzpatrick’s book reads like the liberal individual triumphant, a move that borders on placing her subjects above the conditioning power of History itself.
Much of Fitzpatrick’s reductionism is partially born in a historiographical attack on what she calls the “Soviet subjectivity school.” I could never understand the propensity to ascribe schools in Russian historical studies, especially to ones like the so-called “Soviet subjectivity school” which have no more than two or three scholars attached to them. Neverthless, such ascription serves many, especially as they try to carve out an island of difference within an mostly academic sea of similitude.
The contours in Soviet historiography aside, the real tragedy is that Fitzpatrick’s effort to undermine Hellbeck’s notion of a illiberal Soviet subject, (Hellbeck and Israeli historian Igal Halfin are recognized as the theoretical hydra of a Foucaultian notion of the Soviet self), leads her to posit an equally reductionist view of the self that the “Soviet subjectivity school” has similarly, and often unfairly, been criticized for. But such is the outcome when one rejects the notion of theory altogether. Such declarations mask the fact even the most empirically based analyses are steeped in some theoretical assumption about the lives subject to them.
A study that somehow captures the inner contradictions of life under Stalin that goes beyond Soviet citizens as either dupes or tricksters is still waiting to be written. My methodological position would be an exploration into the dialectical braiding of the two poles. But that is a whole other story that is still in the making.
Thanks Sean. I’ve just ordered The Whisperers which — despite the rather heart-breaking extract above — sounds like it might resonate with me.
“Why did a democratic revolution based on grassroots councils and committees turn into a dictatorship that employed state terror against its opponents, real and imagined, within months of its coming to power?” A haunting question indeed.
By coincidence I am in the middle or re-reading Bruce-Lockhart’s memoirs of his time in Moscow during the revolution with the misleadingly silly title of ‘Memoirs of a British Agent’. By an accident of war, at the incredibly young age of 28 he was the senior British diplomat there and knew or at least met most of the leading figures involved. He was the only allied diplomat to predict the revolution. The Ambassador was in Saint Petersburg.
His opinion is quite simple. Kerensky fell because he would not abandon his allies and make a separate peace. The country was desperate for peace. He was also of the opinion that Kerensky was too naive too altruistic. He quotes this exchange between Lord Beaverbrook and Kerensky: -
Beaverbrook “What was the reason for your collapse?”
Kerensky explained the context that the Germans pushed the Bolshevik rising because Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey were about to make a separate peace less than a fortnight before the October Revolution.
Beaverbrook “Would you have mastered the
Bolsheviks if you had made a separate peace?”
Kerensky “Of course we should be in Moscow still.”
Beaverbrook “Then why didn’t you do it?”
Kerensky “We were too naïve.”
Lockhart, who spoke fluent Russian, strongly opposed intervention which got him no marks with his bosses in the Foreign Office in London. It emerges from the same book that Lenin and Kerensky came from the same town in Russia – Simbirsk although they did not know each other and that K.s father was Lenin’s trustee.
> “Why did a democratic revolution based on grassroots councils and committees turn into a dictatorship that employed state terror against its opponents, real and imagined, within months of its coming to power?”
1. I am afraid that the assumption in first part of the question has yet to be proven. Was it really based on “grassroots councils”? Had these councils any influence on the events which finally led to the October revolt?
2. The Kerensky’s views on the problem of the separate peace with Germany are extremely subjective. Firstly, it would not be very easy to convince the Russian society, which was still quite far from the pacifist sentiments, that the Germans are now our friends. Secondly, the separate peace would not guarantee the restoration of social consent in Russia. The peace could give a chance to solve some of the problems which played a certain role in the bolshevik revolt (like food supply), but not the most important one. After the dethronement of Nicholas II the land became the crucial point in the home politics of Russia and the bolsheviks would use it just as efficiently as they used the food shortage.
PS: running away to look for the Rabinowitch’s trilogy…
In 1917, during the times of the Provisional Government, the writer W.Somerset Maugham spent a few months in Russia in a British secret mission. Although he was interested in Russia before the mission, after getting there he did not particularly liked Russia. Maugham only published a few pages of his journal notes in his “A Writer ‘s Notebook”. They make interesting reading even when it’s obvious that in a lot of respects he did not understand Russia. Among other things, Maugham describes Kerensky and writes about his impressions of Savinkov, with whom he had at least one conversation in a tavern. At one point Maugham remarks that one of the results of the revolution (February) is that people have become more uncivil and ungracious. And then there is this quaint description of the crowd at the Nevsky Prospekt, when the revolutionary process in Russia still seemed fairly innocent and bloodless:
“The dense crowd flows ceaselessly to a fro. Perhaps it is the crowd that gives the Nevsky its character. It does not, as in those other streets, consist chiefly of one class of the population, but of all; and the loiterer may there observe a great variety of his fellow creatures, soldiers, sailors and students, workmen and bourgeoisie, peasants; they talk incessantly; in eager throngs they surround the men who sell the latest edition of a paper. It looks a good-natured crowd, easygoing and patient; I shouldn’t imagine that they had the quick temper of the crowd in Paris which may so easily grow ugly and violent, and I can’t believe that they would ever behave like the crowd of the French Revolution. They give the impression of peaceable folk who want to be amused and excited, but who look upon the events of life chiefly as pleasant topics of conversation.”
Kolya “In 1917, during the times of the Provisional Government, the writer W.Somerset Maugham spent a few months in Russia in a British secret mission.”
Was that the same propaganda mission that was run by Hugh Walpole in StPetersburg in 1916? They went to the same school if that has anything to do with it.
Robert, Maugham starts his 1917 notes with the following words: “In this year I was sent to Russia on a secret mission. That is how I came to make the following notes.” After this brief remark he’s silent about the particulars of the mission itself.
I just checked the Wikipedia entry on Maugham. A quote from it:
“In June, 1917 he was asked by Sir William Wiseman, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia[13] to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda.[14] Two and a half months later the Bolsheviks took control. The job was probably always impossible, but Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded.”
That’s all the info I have.
Kolya “Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded.”
What a bullshiter! I met him once when he was about a hundred years old. He had an amazingly bad stutter.
The allies sent an astonishing number of big wigs to Russia around this time. It was generally a complete waste of time.
Dimitri Minaev “2. The Kerensky’s views on the problem of the separate peace with Germany are extremely subjective. Firstly, it would not be very easy to convince the Russian society, which was still quite far from the pacifist sentiments, that the Germans are now our friends.”
Lockhart never suggested that the Russians were pacifists or liked the Germans. On the contrary he was moved by their sacrifices. He just said that Russia like Austria, Turkey and practically everybody else were exhausted and they had the disadvantage of a very inefficient government machine headed by the Czar who was no war leader.
Robert, to be fair to Maugham I have to point out that the following statement: “Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded” is hearsay found in Wikipedia–whether Maugham ever claimed such thing or not I don’t know. As I wrote before, in the book I have (A Writer’s Notebook) he’s totally silent about the substance of his mission and his notes about Russia (a very small part of the book) are more like the jottings of a curious observer.
I thought his notes were quite interesting and part of it is that in hindsight we can see how wrong he was about some of it. For example, considering that months later civil war and terror broke out in Russia, I found the following passage about the people he saw in Nevsky rather poignant:
“It looks a good-natured crowd, easygoing and patient; I shouldn’t imagine that they had the quick temper of the crowd in Paris which may so easily grow ugly and violent, and I can’t believe that they would ever behave like the crowd of the French Revolution. They give the impression of peaceable folk who want to be amused and excited, but who look upon the events of life chiefly as pleasant topics of conversation.”
Thanks for the post, Sean. Perhaps I’ll write a bit more about the content of those reviews, but for now I just want to say that I’m gratified to see the Nation publish such a thing. Blood is blood, repression is repression. Although I’m not fond of labels, in the US I’m considered a person of the left. Nonetheless, one of my pet peeves about the left (well, much more than a pet peeve) is that although it rightfully and vociferously condemned abuses from right wing governments, it all too easily ignored or explained away abuses from Marxist regimes. I don’t know if it was incredible naivete, a sort of willful blindness, or if there was so much dogmatic belief in the rightness of their cause that they accepted “the ends justifies the means” rationale.
Many old American leftists, some of whom fought bravely in the Spanish Civil War, were fond of saying that they were “premature anti-fascist”. That is, they suffered for being anti-fascist before it was acceptable to be so. The same can be said about many who were premature anti-Bolsheviks, premature anti-communists. They told their stories years before Solzhenitsyn published his works, years before Khruschev gave his famous speech. Because of it they were disdained and disbelieved by many of the left.
…[O]ne of my pet peeves about the left (well, much more than a pet peeve) is that although it rightfully and vociferously condemned abuses from right wing governments, it all too easily ignored or explained away abuses from Marxist regimes.
Kolya – There’s an interesting opinion piece in this morning’s London Times on this subject, albeit pegged to Castro’s retirement. (A senior government minister in the UK recently acknowledged him as a “hero of the left.”)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article3441328.ece
I do worry that practically the only unifying theme to be heard from the left these days is anti-Americanism.
“I don’t know if it was incredible naivete, a sort of willful blindness, or if there was so much dogmatic belief in the rightness of their cause that they accepted “the ends justifies the means” rationale.”
I think at the time this was going on (I assume here you are talking about Stalin mainly) the idea that the “end justifies the means” was pretty close to universal and not at all a province of the left specifically.
Well, the standard defense of Castro (of whom I am not a fan by any means, but he [was] is a pretty benevolent autocrat by any standard) is that Cuba is being besieged by outside forces trying to undermine it, and so its government has little choice but to implement repressive measures.
I wrote:
“I don’t know if it was incredible naivete, a sort of willful blindness, or if there was so much dogmatic belief in the rightness of their cause that they accepted “the ends justifies the means” rationale.”
Chris wrote:
“I think at the time this was going on (I assume here you are talking about Stalin mainly) the idea that the “end justifies the means” was pretty close to universal and not at all a province of the left specifically.”
I was not limiting myself to Stalin’s time. I was including Lenin’s time as well as the contrast of how the present day left views two human rights abusing tyrants, Pinochet and Castro.
I also vividly remember a conversation I had with an American friend in the late 1970s, a committed Marxist (who probably thought I was a good guy but, unfortunately, hopelessly wrong about ideology because of my family background). It was in a bar. That was in a bar. Minutes before I was sitting with two Cambodians who recently escaped from their country after the Khmer Rouge take over. Their English was not good, mine was not great either, but I heard the tragic story of their families. the story of their families irs was a tragic story. My Marxist friend sat on the table a couple of minutes before the Cambodian left. After they left I recounted their story and asked him what he thought about it. He, of course, was moved by what they went through, but then said something like, “unfortunately they were in the wrong side of history.” This guy was not a bad guy and he was sympathetic to those two Cambodians as individuals, but he saw them as the inevitable broken eggs on the way to making an omelet. You cannot stop history. To be fair to him, that was before the full extent of the Khmer Rouge killing fields was known, but it was no secret that many people lost their lives there simply for being educated or having previous contact with foreigners.
Chris, I think in the 20th century it was the Bolsheviks/Communists who used the “end justifies the mean” rationale to a much more open and greater degree than others. Well, the Nazis did too, but they didn’t last as long and you probably read how Hitler claimed to have learned from the Bolsheviks. In general noncommunist and nonfascist regimes treated their ideological enemies with more restraint. For example, Tsarist Russia acted with much more restraint towards the leftist who aspired to overthrow the Tsar than the Bolsheviks treated those who opposed them.
Meh, Pinochet was far more brutal than Castro. Neither of them is a hate object for me by the way.
Everybody was using terror as a tactic in those days. The Brits had just used it in the Boer War, the French in Africa; the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny is based on the idea that the ends justify the means, and that was still recent in the early part of the century. People were quite blase about it. Hell it is implicit in the whole 19th-century idea of history as the march of the Progress of Man in all of its variants. It’s only post-WWs I and II and their immense destruction that our cultural value scheme has shifted.
It’s mystifying to me why people continue to pay any heed to Sheila Fitzpatrick and her awful historiography. I’m a grad student in Russian studies and (unfortunately) have had to read reams of her stuff. I never understood how she could have progressed so far in the field by digging up random letters to various party committees and shouting
“ah ha! there was popular pressure on the government, and this explains collectivization, the great terror, the gulags, industrialization, etc.”
“Everybody was using terror as a tactic in those days. The Brits had just used it in the Boer War”
The British used “concentration” camps not as a terror tactic but as a means to pacify the country. The conditions in them were pretty terrible but not I think deliberately. The phrase “concentration camp” mutated under the Nazis.
On the other hand in Rhodesia they did and certainly in Tasmania where the aborigines were hunted for 10 shillings a head as I recall. The fact that the Boers were white may have had something to do with the difference. In the repression of the Indian Mutiny they blew rebel soldiers to pieces by tying them across a gun barrel. But yes terrorising was what you did to enemies. Human life was not sacred – not one’s own or anyone else’s. I suspect that the new sanctity of human life is associated with the end of religious belief in the West. If you do not believe in resurrection this is the only life you have so better hang on to it.
The rhetoric that accompanied WW2, Nurnberg war trials etc, also changed the whole mind set at any rate in the West.
Chris wrote:
“Meh, Pinochet was far more brutal than Castro.”
Pinochet was a tyrant with plenty of blood on his hands. The same with Castro. Pinochet, though, was not “far more brutal” than Castro. In terms of blood on their hands they are probably in the same category, but I would not be surprised if Castro is actually responsible for more deaths. Research on Pinochet’s death toll indicate that about 3,000 people were killed in Chile during his years–most of them in the first years of his regime. This research was conducted by people who were opponents of Pinochet, but let us increase the number to 4,000 (I often noticed that people assume a much higher death toll.). Castro’s numbers are about the same or, according to many estimates several times higher. Whatever it is, in that regard Castro’s record is not better.
On the other hand, after the first five years or so, Chile during the Pinochet years (1973-1990) was a more open society than Cuba under Castro. There are many people who supported Allende and escaped right after the Pinochet coup only to go back to Chile a few years later without ever hiding their contempt for Pinochet and maintaining their freedom and their ability to travel and return at will. Starting around 1979 or so people could openly express their political opposition to Pinochet’s dictatorship. Furthermore, and this is not trivial, in 1980 Pinochet agreed to a 1988 plebiscite on his rule and committed to a return to civilian rule in 1990. Somewhat deluded, he was sure that he was going to win the plebiscite in 1988. He lost and then kept his word and (unhappily) stepped down in 1990.
I’m certainly not a Pinochet apologist. He should have been tried and convicted for crimes against humanity. And I don’t buy the rationale of many in the right that his dictatorship somehow saved Chile. All things considered, though, I don’t see how people can credibly claim that he was worse than Castro.
Chris:
“Everybody was using terror as a tactic in those days. The Brits had just used it in the Boer War, the French in Africa; the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny is based on the idea that the ends justify the means, and that was still recent in the early part of the century. People were quite blase about it. Hell it is implicit in the whole 19th-century idea of history as the march of the Progress of Man in all of its variants. It’s only post-WWs I and II and their immense destruction that our cultural value scheme has shifted.”
Chris, I am not saying the others were angels, but the Bolsheviks were much more amoral and ruthless in applying the “ends justifies the means” rationale.
Robert – Don’t overlook Kenya and the Mau Mau uprising. I was reading Caroline Elkins’ “Britain’s Gulag” recently, and was sickened by the British brutality documented. (I’ll not get into the numbers which I realize are deeply contentious amongst historians.)
More generally, I don’t think one should blame ideology for the deployment of brutal means in the retention of power. I think dictators (or Foreign Ministry-appointed governors in some cases) adopt whatever suits their needs. Early on, after the revolution, Castro claimed to be an anti-Communist. That was before his deal with Krushchev of course.
Kolya: I think in the 20th century it was the Bolsheviks/Communists who used the “end justifies the mean” rationale to a much more open and greater degree than others.
A busy day so I could only skim through the exchange on dictators until now. Kolya, I usually find myself agreeing with you on most things, but on this one, I have to differ.
The assertion that moral ends justify their means has an excellent pedigree, starting with Machiavelli and continuing through Lenin. But it’s been central to much liberal thinking too, leading to marvellously inane arguments amongst ethicists about how, say, to calibrate the morality of an action from its consequences.
ALL dictators believe their means are justified. Some say it’s for the greater good. Others say it’s for their god. A few may be honest enough to say that they are saving themselves, though no doubt even that mundane objective is wrapped up in some noble-sounding cause.
All non-elected leaders and most elected ones are driven to this, virtually by definition. How else can they get up in the morning and face their nations. Where on earth would that kind of impudence and arrogance come from, unless through some variant of this very basic deceit: “What I must do is vital to my country and I must use every means at my disposal to achieve it.” Before you know it, the camps are being built, the dissenters being rounded up and the bodies are piling high.”
That’s why it’s our duty to treat them all with equal suspicion. Some get away with more mayhem than others. But they will ALL get up to something if we let them.
In other words, this whole business of compiling columns of Bolsheviks and fascists and others into better or worse killers makes no sense. There shouldn’t be league tables of dictatorship. They’re all bad. If circumstances warrant they will round you and me up in a minute, and pin a medals on the guys who did it.
Sorry for the rant.
FH, you end your comment with “sorry for the rant”. Well, it wasn’t a rant at all and I agree with most of what you wrote.
“The assertion that moral ends justify their means has an excellent pedigree, starting with Machiavelli and continuing through Lenin.”
Yes, I did not claim otherwise. I simply stated, “I think in the 20th century it was the Bolsheviks/Communists who used the “end justifies the mean” rationale to a much more open and greater degree than others.” I made it clear that I’m not talking about absolutes, but about a gradient.
The Provisional Government folks were a hapless bunch, but one positive thing we can say about them is that they felt a much stronger sense of restraint when dealing with their enemies. Even compared to many of their fellow Marxists, the Bolsheviks showed considerably less moral scruples in their way to power and in the way they kept power.
“All dictators believe their means are justified.”
Yes, I agree.
“All non-elected leaders and most elected ones are driven to this, virtually by definition. How else can they get up in the morning and face their nations. Where on earth would that kind of impudence and arrogance come from, unless through some variant of this very basic deceit: “What I must do is vital to my country and I must use every means at my disposal to achieve it.” Before you know it, the camps are being built, the dissenters being rounded up and the bodies are piling high.”
Well, not all dictators, even when they have the opportunity, act like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on.
“That’s why it’s our duty to treat them all with equal suspicion. Some get away with more mayhem than others. But they will ALL get up to something if we let them.”
I agree.
“In other words, this whole business of compiling columns of Bolsheviks and fascists and others into better or worse killers makes no sense.”
FH, context is everything here. As I wrote, blood is blood, repression is repression. When I place Castro and Pinochet in the same category the usual reaction I get from people is that I’m wrong because Castro is the much better guy. Then I often compare their records side by side. I think I made it clear, though, that they both belong in the same ignoble category.
“When I place Castro and Pinochet in the same category the usual reaction I get from people is that I’m wrong because Castro is the much better guy.”
Better or worse? Castro was the smarter in the end he did not die hounded and vilified in his own country like Pinochet. The thing about Castro that is not generally understood is that he was first and foremost determined to end the US coloniaisation of the island. His first major speech promised that there would not be another 1898, when the Cubans kicked the Spanish out and then saw the US turn the island into a colony. This meant that he could not go down the democratic route because, informed by Che Guevara, he knew all about the experience of Guatemala in 1954. They took the democratic route and the US took advantage of weak new institutions in a poor country and provoked a regime change to a more commercially friendly but totally undemocratic regime. I have no doubt that Russia’s cautious democracy and sensitivity to NGOs is based on the same fears.
“The assertion that moral ends justify their means has an excellent pedigree, starting with Machiavelli and continuing through Lenin.”
It’s a lot older than that!
Well, not all dictators, even when they have the opportunity, act like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on.
I don’t want to deprive the gents you list of their special place in hell, but I do think all dictators have it within them the special factors needed to join them. As you say, it’s a question of opportunity.
But, if we really must undertake comparative studies on these guys — and of course we do need to understand them — I’m very sure I’m not competent for the task. We’d need to look at each’s record in context, and one of the features of dictatorship is control of information and the media, so that’s difficult. There is much room for myth-making.
“I don’t want to deprive the gents you list of their special place in hell, but I do think all dictators have it within them the special factors needed to join them.”
Define “dictator.” The word is vague and has both descriptive and normative content. Autocrat? Despot?
You know it suddenly occurs to me that it might be useful to understand the Russian attitude toward “dermokratiya” by looking at Plato, for whom “democracy” was a pejorative term and for somewhat similar reasons. Also, and more obviously, Hobbes.
On second thought, forget what I said about Plato. I stand by Hobbes though.
Define “dictator.” The word is vague and has both descriptive and normative content. Autocrat? Despot?
On my worst days, pretty much anyone in authority. But they’ve given me pills for that. Progessing nicely thanks.
It’s obviously a prejorative term which no longer has a precise meaning. I guess it makes sense that all the potential synonyms one might reach for are freighted with negative connotation too. I suppose any national leader unconstrained by competing authority. Perhaps that will do. Some people might look at the ways and means such a leader gained power, and whether there was some kind of legitimacy. I’m not sure that’s critical.
All I have to say about this dictator stuff, is that no dictator rules by fear, charisma, or individual guile alone. All must and do have consent either by a sizable section of a population, a class or clan or elites, or a foreign patron + a domestic section of elites. Discussions that tend to focus on one person, whether they be Castro, Stalin, Pinochet, etc absolve the many, many people who gladly, and sometimes over zealously fulfilled their policies of violence and terror.
In regard to what Russian’s think about “dermokratiya,” I think it is enough to look at it in the context in which the pejorative emerged, that is the 1990s. Especially since I doubt Hobbes was on many Russians’ minds.
“Especially since I doubt Hobbes was on many Russians’ minds.”
Well yeah. I was thinking of theory.
You know, that whole investing the Leviathan with supreme power so as to avoid chaos and civil war thing.
Oh yes, far be it from me to shun theory! In that case, yes Hobby-Hobbes is a perfect place to explore.
Sean, I actually agree with what you wrote about “this dictator stuff”. It’s obvious that Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, et al had a substantial number of supporters. Heck, look at Chile. Besides the deaths Pinochet caused, Chileans learned that he was another corrupt leader who secretly enriched himself. The current Chilean government is hostile to Pinochet’s legacy and the current president was a personal victim of his regime. And yet his death was mourned by what for me was a surprisingly large number of people. Nobody compelled those thousands of people to attend his funeral, and yet they did.
A notice to Sean and the Sean’s blog community of stimulating commenters: I’m publicly vowing not to send any additional comments for the next two weeks (at a minimum). I’m compelled to such a step because I have plenty of work to do and I’ve been using this blog as a means of distraction. Blogs are great procrastinating tools and lately my “to do” pile grew higher and higher. Knowing how weak I am, I decided that the surest way for me to stay away from your pleasant company is by making this public. No backing down now! Take care you all and thanks for the conversations!
All must and do have consent either by a sizable section of a population, a class or clan or elites, or a foreign patron + a domestic section of elites.
Yes, of course. Another reason comparison is so difficult, even for conversational/anecdotal purposes.
Knowing how weak I am, I decided that the surest way for me to stay away from your pleasant company is by making this public.
Gosh, sounds like the 12 Steps. Remember the first step is to accept that you are addicted.
Kolya thinks he’s too good for us.
He’s right.
I wish I could be like Kolya.
Who would lead the Stuffites then?
Stuff is eternal. It transcends mere men. Stuff shall endure.
Stuff is eternal. It transcends mere men.
So, umm, Stuffism is, like, a religion then?
All things are made of stuff, are they not? To be means to be stuff. Including Russia. So see this is relevant!
“It’s obviously a prejorative term which no longer has a precise meaning. I guess it makes sense that all the potential synonyms one might reach for are freighted with negative connotation too. I suppose any national leader unconstrained by competing authority.”
I realize you’re using an ideal type as a definition, but in reality I don’t there has ever been a national leader unconstrained by competing authority. But like I said you’re talking about an ideal type, not real examples, so that’s OK.
I’d also like to point out that the idea that the ends justify the means is believed in by just about everybody, excape for a few extyreme moral absolutists — it depends what the means and ends are and the relative weight one assigns to them. For instance, to pick an Ethics 101 example, killing someone to steal his wallet is seen as evil, while killing someone in a war to achieve the end of victory or killing an attacker to stay alive are not.
Obviously in the worldview of the Bolsheviks this is abig deal because they thought they were creating Universal Justice, in the name of which you can violate a lot of means.
I don’t really think it applies to the Nazis, who specifically turned murder into a good in itself.
Chris – There are always a few Kant followers — moral absolutists — who believe that immoral actions are always wrong, regardless of either intention or outcome. And then there are those of us somewhere in the middle, dithering.
Regarding dictators, yes, I was trying to come up with an archtype of some sort, without resorting to examples. Even at that, it doesn’t work very well because most people would agree that there are some circumstances in which dictator-like powers are advisable and might be readily conceded — a “war leader” for instance, which for the Romans is exactly what a dictator actually was.
“Chris – There are always a few Kant followers — moral absolutists — who believe that immoral actions are always wrong, regardless of either intention or outcome. ”
I know I’m being pedantic here, but Kant himself didn’t actually believe this. In his extremely little-read Metaphysics of Morals, which is his attempt at practical ethical philosophy, this is clear. The problem is that most Kantians don’t read the MM but stop at the three Critiques or, even worse, the Prolegemenon.
Chris – Not pedantic at all. Happy to defer.
Have you ever been to his tomb at the university in Kaliningrad?
No I haven’t — I would love to though. I would alse love to visit Heidegger’s hut.
I did go to Tubingen to chack out Hegel’s (and Schelling’s and Holderlin’s) old stomping grounds. They have his beer tabs on the university wall.