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Some Reflections on Teaching the History of Russia and the Nationalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

James T. Flynn
James T. Flynn*
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross
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Extract

The New York Times welcomed, as did we all, the appearance of two excellent recent books, Hedrick Smith's The Russians and Robert Kaiser's Russia. But the reviewer began by saying, “It is amazing—worse it is alarming—to realize how little one knows about the Soviet Union.”1 This notion that we know little about Russia is an old one, of course, and has had its uses. One need but recall Churchill's famous tag about Russia as enigma wrapped in mystery to remember that declarations of ignorance can be used to spur action. Nonetheless, it should be clear by now that whatever else may be said about the notion of our ignorance concerning Russia, one can no longer simply say that it is true. American scholars for many years now have probed with remarkable success all aspects of the Russian experience. Yet the notion persists that we do not know Russia at all well. Why does this notion persist? What can, or should, be done about it? While definitive answers to such questions are too much to expect of any brief essay, the goal of this paper is to sketch at least the broad outlines of what appear to be some reasonable answers.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , Spring 1978 , pp. 44 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (USSR and East Europe) Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. Philip Knightly in The New York Times Book Review , January 25, 1976, p. 5.Google Scholar

2. “History,” in American Research on Russia , ed. H. H. Fisher (Bloomington, 1959), pp. 27–28. For some well-honed analyses of where Russian studies in history in the U. S. have been and seem likely to go, see Adam Ulam, “USA: Some Critical Reflections,” and Robert F. Byrnes, “USA: Work at the Universities,” in The State of Soviet Studies, ed. Walter Z. Laqueur and Leopold Labedz (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 16–23, 24–30. An extremely useful discussion of a set of problems of increasing complexity and significance is Eric. H. Boehm, “Bibliography: Current State and Prospects,” in Russia: Essays in History and Literature, ed. Lyman H. Legters (Leiden, 1972), pp. 152–164.Google Scholar

3. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., A Parting of Ways: Government and Educated Public in Russia 1801–1855 (New York, 1977), p. 264.Google Scholar

4. For examples, see Slavic Review, 34 (1975): pp. 141–42 and 817.Google Scholar

5. McNeill, William H., The Shape of European History (New York, 1974). Professor McNeill's opening chapter, “The Inherited Shape of European History,” is a brilliantly lucid brief introduction to this whole problem.Google Scholar

6. A remarkably balanced brief treatment of this whole topic is in Paul K. Conklin and Roland N. Stromberg, The Heritage and Challenge of History (New York, 1973), pp. 57–104. The classic analysis, and still the most trenchant critique, of Whig history is Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). For an excellent introduction to one of the most influential of all the historians of “liberty,” see William H. McNeill, Lord Acton: Essays in the Liberal Interpretation of History (Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

7. It is an understatement to say that the interpretation offered here is not universally accepted. To cite but one prestigious example, in 1971 the editors of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, put together a special winter issue on “Historical Studies Today” in an effort to probe the problem behind the fact that there was “a diminished interest in history” abroad in the land as well as “many evidences of antihistorical bias in contemporary culture” which pointed to the “fact that a major turning away from historical study is threatened in both the schools and colleges of America” a development which has “the most important implications for the character of learning in society” (p. v.) The solution recommended is the production of more and better monographs. The many distinguished contributors to this issue present excellent, often brilliant, essays on the state of the art in several of the subspecialties of professional history. The focus is on the “Annales school” and its virtues as the model to follow. The point here, of course, is not to question the professional excellence of “Annales” work, but only to suggest that it differs conceptually in large measure only in degree of refinement from the call to a “New History” of James Harvey Robinson (1912). Indeed, Michelet and even Macaulay himself had no trouble warning against the dangers of excessively narrow focus on political factors.Google Scholar

8. Ocherki po istorii russkoi kultury. 3 vols. (Paris, 1930–37) and, with C. Seignobos and L. Eisenmann, eds., Histoire de Russie. 3 vols., (Paris, 1932–33). An English version of the latter is C. L. Markmann, trans., New York, 1968–69. A well nuanced appreciation of Miliukov by Joseph T. Fuhrmann forms the introduction to an excellent translation by Joseph L. Wieczynski of the first half of the third volume of the Ocherki (published as Origins of Ideology [Gulf Breeze, 1974]). Fuhrmann offers a useful caution, pointing out that Miliukov, as any historian of genuine stature, must be regarded as more than the representative of a “school” of history.Google Scholar

9. An extremely valuable treasure trove of materials on this point may be found in Elizabeth Beyerly, The Europecentric Historiography of Russia (The Hague, 1973). It is a matter of much regret, therefore, that the writing and organization make this book nearly unreadable. For readable analyses of Beyerly's work, see the review by N. V. Riasanovsky in Slavic Review, 34 (1975): pp. 145–146; and Alexander Gerschenkron, “Europecentrism and Other Horrors: A Review Article,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19 (1977): pp. 108–23.Google Scholar

10. The publication of such a serious and well done example of the genre as George Katkov, Russia 1917: The February Revolution (London, 1968) indicates that this approach is neither spent nor only the preserve of woolly-minded nonprofessionals.Google Scholar

11. The main outlines of this debate, and the remarkable scholarly erudition and sophistication of the debaters, can be approached in Nicholas Stavrou, ed., Russia Under The Last Tsar (Minneapolis, 1969); and Robert H. McNeal, ed., Russia in Transition (New York, 1970). One of the most lucid scoutings of the question for American students, if also one of the more pessimistic answers, is Theodore Von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1971). Von Laue's main point might be summarized as suggesting that the Whig-progressive hypothesis was wrong, that the experience of Russia and Eastern Europe show that the path of liberal-capitalist-parliamentary West Europe is not the path ahead of all mankind, but only a unique, single occurrence.Google Scholar

12. Naturally, this can distort interpretation also. For example, the account of Miliukov's role in the provisional government given in M. T. Florinsky, Russia: A Short History. 2nd ed. (New York, 1969), pp. 413, 417, suggests to students that the hope for a democratic outcome to the revolution was undermined largely by extraordinarily foolish behavior by liberal leaders. Miliukov, on the other hand, well schooled in the great Progressive tradition, thought that Russia's progress would come as “the inevitable result of an internal evolution … only held back by surrounding conditions.” Paul Miliukov, Political Memoirs 1905–1917, ed. A. P. Mendel (Ann Arbor, 1967), p. vi. The offending “surrounding conditions” were largely the tsarist state, of course. Despite his horror-stricken view of Miliukov's blunders in 1917 (a man “doctrinaire, stubborn …” whose policies were “pure fancy”), Florinsky followed Miliukov's Ocherki not only in conception and as a source of information, but in places word for word. Compare, e. g., Miliukov, Ocherki 4th ed. (1905), 2: 340–55 with Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation. 2 vols. (New York, 1947, fifth printing 1959), 2: 800–06.Google Scholar

13. Florinsky, Russia: A Short History. Florinsky's texts make good examples in this context not because they are bad books but because they have been widely used and are excellent at what they do. Nonetheless, it may be worth noting that part of the progress made in study of Russia in America since 1959 has been the publication of much superior texts. For example, N. V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 3rd ed. (New York, 1977) provides discussion of all three of our eighteenth-century examples which is much advanced, both in information and in concept.Google Scholar

14. I am indebted to Roland Bainton, emeritus professor of Church history, Yale University, for this comparison.Google Scholar

15. Richard Pipes, “Reflections on the Nationality Problems in the Soviet Union,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, ed. N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan, (Cambridge, 1975), p. 456. There were of course significant exceptions. See, e. g., Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, S. N. Trubetskoi: An Intellectual among the Intelligentsia in Prerevolutionary Russia (Belmont, 1976), especially pp. 116–17, 152–53.Google Scholar

16. The literature on these questions is immense. Excellent up-to-date summarizations of the best scholarship may be found in C. A. Macartney and A. W. Palmer, Independent Eastern Europe (London, 1962) and Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle, 1974). See especially, Macartney, pp. 78–87 and Rothschild, pp. 76–86.Google Scholar

17. See especially Raeff's Imperial Russia 1682–1825 (New York, 1971), pp. 39–67 and “Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy Towards the Nationalities,” in Soviet Nationality Problems, ed. Edward Allworth (New York, 1971), pp. 22–42. This book and Zev Katz et al., eds., Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York, 1975) provide excellent introductions to all aspects of the “nationalities” problems in the various states which have been organized around a Russian core. See also the recently published Ihor Kamenetsky, ed., Nationalism and Human Rights: Processes of Modernization in the USSR (Littleton, Colo., 1977).Google Scholar

18. Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History. Reprint. (New York, 1965), pp. 27–28.Google Scholar