Robert V Daniels, Revisionism Avant la Lettre

7/23/2019 Robert V Daniels, Revisionism Avant la Lettre

1/7

Comment: Revisionism Avant la LettreAuthor(s): Robert V. DanielsSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 705-710Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27652946.

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2/7

Comment:

Revisionism

Avant

la

Lettre

Robert

V.

Daniels

I

guess

I

was

a

revisionist

before

anyone

had

ever

heard

the

term

used

in

its

contemporary

sense.

When

I

embarked

on

Soviet

studies,

revision

ism

meant

the

democratic and

gradualist

revision

of

Marxism

by

Eduard

Bernstein

and

his

followers.

That,

of

course,

was

heresy

in

the

eyes

of

Marxist-Leninists,

and

"revisionism"

became

a

familiar

swearword

in

the

Soviet

lexicon.

My

own

unwitting

revisionism

in

the

new sense

of

deviation

from

the

Soviet

studies

mainstream

really

began

with

my

participation

in

Michael

Karpovich's

seminar

in

Russian

history

in

1947.

In

my paper,

"The Russian

Proletariat

as

a

Revolutionary

Force

in

1917,"

I

highlighted

the

Bolsheviks

and the

fabzavkomy,

because

that

was

where

the

published

sources

were.1

Nothing,

clearly,

could

have

been

more

"1917-revisionist,"

as a

departure

from

the

view of

a

Bolshevik

conspiracy?nothing, perhaps,

save

the

book

and article

I

wrote

twenty

years

later

to

debunk the

roles

of both

Vladimir

Lenin

and Lev Trotskii

in

the

October

revolution and

to

show

that the

Bolshevik

victory

was a

historical

accident.2

But

that work

reflected

my

shift from social-economic into political history?history from the top

down,

I

confess.

It

was a

revision

of

revisionism,

for

which

I

was

faulted

for

underestimating

the

role of

the

masses 3

More

central

to

my

work

has

been

the

question

of

Marxist-Leninist

ideology

and its

historical

role,

about

which

I

was

again

a

revisionist

before

I

knew its

new

meaning.

My

position

has been clear

in

my

mind

ever

since

it dawned

on

me

in the

course

of

my

dissertation

research

on

the

com

munist

opposition

in

the

1920s.

I hold that in the

course

of

Iosif Stalin's

rise

to

power,

Marxism-Leninism,

though

incessantly

inculcated,

became

instrumentalized

in the

hands

of

the

leadership

and

lost

both

its

fixity

of

meaning

and its

power

to

guide

action.4 This is

my

answer to the

ideologi

cal

interpretation

of

Soviet

history.

1.

E.g.,

V. L. Meiler and A. M.

Pankratova, eds.,

Rabochee dvizhenie

v

1917

godu

(Mos

cow

and

Leningrad,

1926).

Contrary

to

legend, Karpovich

did

not

refuse

to

teach

about

the

revolution and the Soviet

period.

2.

Robert

V.

Daniels,

Red

October: The Bolshevik

Revolution

of

1917

(New

York,

1967);

Daniels,

"The

Bolshevik

Gamble,"

Russian

Review

26,

no.

4

(October

1967):

331-40,

reworked

in

Daniels,

The Rise and

Fall

of

Communism

in

Russia

(New

Haven,

2007),

chap.

8.

3.

By

Ronald

Grigor

Suny,

in

"Toward

a

Social

History

of

the October

Revolution,"

American

Historical Review

88,

no.

1

(February

1983):

40-41. Cf. 1.1.

Mints,

"Neveroiatnye

shansy

Roberta

Deniel'sa," Kommunist,

no.

8

(April

1970).

4.

See Robert

V

Daniels,

The Conscience

of

the Revolution: Communist

Opposition

in

Soviet

Russia

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1960);

also

Daniels,

The Nature

of

Communism

(New

York,

1962),

chap.

9,

sec.

6

("The

Transformation of the Movement and the Function of

Doctrine").

For

a

later

reflection,

see

Daniels,

"Stalinist

Ideology

as

False

Consciousness,"

in Marcello

Flores

and

Francesca

Gori,

eds.,

II

mito

delTURSS:

La cultura occidentale

e

TUnione

Sovi?tica

(Milan,

1990),

condensed

version

in

Daniels,

Rise and

Fall

of

Communism,

chap.

22.

Slavic

Review

67,

no.

3

(Fall

2008)

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3/7

706

Slavic

Review

Revisionism in

Soviet

history

is

commonly equated

with

social

his

tory,

an

endeavor

illustriously

exemplified

by

Sheila

Fitzpatrick.

As

his

tory

"from

below,"

it

certainly

got

a

big

boost from

the

New

American

Revolution

of

the

1960s

that

was

echoed

throughout

the

historical

pro

fession,

not

just

in

the Soviet

field,

though

Nikita

Khrushchev's

easing

of

access to

nonsensitive

archives

contributed.

But

even

this

new

revisionism

was

not

all

that

new;

a

lot

of

the

questions

that

it

raised?totalitarianism,

modernization,

movements

from

below,

interest

groups

inside

the

power

structure,

the

cultural

revolution

under

Stalin?were

old

hat

to

people

who

had

embarked

on

Soviet

studies

before

the

1960s.

In

any

case,

by

sug

gesting

that

there

may

have been

an

autonomous

social

realm

beyond

the

effective reach

of

dictatorial

political control,

social

history directly

chal

lenged

the

prevailing

totalitarian

model,

tempting

devotees

of

the latter

to

impute

dire

political

agendas

to

the

revisionists

and

provoking

all

the

recriminations

that

Fitzpatrick

recounts.

At

the

time

these

controversies

largely

passed

me

by. My

own reserva

tions

about the

totalitarian

model

for

its

unhistorical

character and

its

ideological

simplemindedness

were

quite

independent

of

social-history

revisionism.

Not

that I would

deny

the

significance

of

social

history?

indeed,

I

have

used

some

of

its

statistical

and

demographic

methods

in

studying

neo-Stalinism.5

Still,

I

am

inclined

to

think

of

social

history

as

a

distinct discipline, a form of sociology in the time dimension, as it were,

whose

patterns

and

conclusions

then

become

data

for

history

as

such.

The

main

axis of

controversy

over

revisionism,

clearly,

is

the

totalitar

ian

model,

or

as

Fitzpatrick

puts

it,

the

question

of

power.

Can all

power

in

a

society

be

concentrated

at

the

top?

Belief in

this

proposition

has often

become

an

article

of

faith,

making

any

sort

of

revisionism

that

recognizes

constraints

from

below

a

kind of

connivance

in

the

evil of

the

totalitarian

system

itself.

The

notion

that

a

totalitarian

regime

can

be

subjected

to

the

same

standards

of

objective

historical and

social

science

explanation

then

takes on the

appearance

of

apology

for

such

regimes.6

For

this

orthodoxy

of

absolute

totalitarian

evil

there

were,

so

to

speak,

four

Gospels

by

Hannah

Arendt,

Merle

Fainsod,

Carl

Friedrich

with his

student

Zbigniew

Brzezinski,

and

Leonard

Schapiro

(though

none

of

them

were

quite

as

doctrinaire

as

their

disciples)

? Arendt

was

probably

5.

See

Robert

V

Daniels,

"Office

Holding

and

Elite

Status:

The

Central

Committee

of

the

CPSU,"

in

Paul

Cocks,

Robert

V.

Daniels,

and

Nancy

Whittier

Heer,

eds.,

The

Dynam

ics

of

Soviet

Politics

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1976),

condensed

as

"The

Central

Committee

as

a

Bureaucratic

Elite,"

in

Daniels,

Rise

and

Fall

of

Communism,

chap.

27;

also

Daniels,

"Political

Processes and Generational Change," in Archie Brown, ed., Political

Leadership

in the Soviet

Union

(London,

1989),

condensed

as

"The

Generational

Revolution,"

in

Daniels,

Rise

and

Fall

of

Communism,

chap.

28.

6. I

recall

Conyers

Read's

scandalous

presidential

address

to

the

American

Histori

cal

Association

in

December

1949 when

the

Cold

War

was

pretty

hot,

to

the

effect

that

academic

judgments

should

be

subordinated

to

the

national

interest

in

prevailing

against

the

Soviet

Union.

Conyers

Read,

"The

Social

Responsibilities

of

the

Historian,"

American

Historical

Review

55,

no.

2

(January

1950):

275-85.

7.

Hannah

Arendt,

The

Origins

of

Totalitarianism

(New

York,

1951);

Merle

Fainsod,

How

Russia Is

Ruled

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1953);

CarlJ.

Friedrich

and

ZbigniewK.

Brzezinski,



4/7

Revisionism

Avant

la

Lettre

707

the

most

influential,

though

her

book

was

mainly

based

on

the

Nazi

case.

By

contrast,

Fainsod

was a

master

of

Sovietology,

with

a

strong

historical

sense.

Friedrich

and

Brzezinski

were

the

most

canonical,

supported

by

Schapiro;

they

described

the

Soviet Union

as an

unchanging

monolith

set

up

in

accordance

with Marxist

ideology.

The

Grand

Inquisitor,

in this

sce

nario,

was

Robert

Conquest,

a

great

scholar

and

a

mild-mannered

man

in

person,

but

a

fire-and-brimstone

type

in

public

controversy.

Guesses

about

the number

of

purge

victims

and

gulag

inmates

became

in

his

mind

a

lit

mus

test

for

academic virtue

or

depravity.8

Curiously,

both

the

revisionists

and

the

totalitarianists

(to

coin

a

term)

have

felt

like

oppressed

minorities.

Fitzpatrick

repeatedly

cites

Richard

Pipes

and

Martin

Malia

as

her

tormentors,

but

not

many

other academ

ics.

These

few,

however,

found

enduring

resonance

in

the American

mass

media,

since

they

told the

public

what

it

wanted

to

hear.

For their

part,

critics

of

the

totalitarian

model,

dismissing

it

as

an

ar

tifact

of

Cold War

propaganda,

have

often

thrown

the

baby

out

with

the

bath

water.

As

a

concept,

totalitarianism

long

antedates

the

Cold

War,

having

generally

been

used

to

describe

the

commonalities

among

both

right-

and

left-wing

dictatorships.

Mussolini

advanced

the

term in

a

posi

tive

sense to

describe

his

regime.9

To

be

sure,

totalitarianism

became

a

slogan

for emotional

mobilization

against

the

Soviet

Union

after

the

Cold

War set in, but in the abstract there is nothing wrong with the concept that

a

little

tinkering

could

not

remedy.

The

model

needs

historical

context

to

account for

the

advent

of totalitarianism

and its

possible

dissolution

apart

from defeat

in

war.

It

needs

to

recognize

the

practical

limits

to state

control

over

society.

And

it

needs

to

allow

for

differences

of

degree

among

various

regimes

(and

not

just

the

sharp

categorization

of "totalitarian"?

usually

Left?versus

"authoritarian"?always

Right.10

Paralleling

controversy

over

totalitarianism

is

interpretation

of

the

tu

multuous

events

in

the

Soviet

Union between

the late

1920s

and

the

mid

1980s,

the

period

I

call

(with

undisguised

bias toward the role of the indi

vidual

at

the

top)

the

"Stalin

Revolution."11

Was

Stalinism

a

new

departure

from,

even

a

betrayal

of,

Leninism,

or

was

it the

direct

implementation

of

the

process

Lenin

had

set

in

motion?

I

find that

the

more one

digs

into

detail,

the

clearer

is the

picture

of

a

sharp

break,

Stalin's

"velikii

perelom"

though

Lenin

pointed

the

re

Totalitarian

Dictatorship

and

Autocracy

(Cambridge,

Mass.,

1956);

Leonard

Schapiro,

The

Communist

Party of

the

Soviet

Union

(New

York,

1960).

8.

See,

e.g.,

Robert

Conquest,

"What

Is

Terror?"

Slavic

Review

45,

no.

2

(Summer

1986): 235-37.

9.

Abbott

Gleason,

Totalitarianism:

The

Inner

History of

the Cold

War

(New

York, 1995),

16-20.

Gleason

does

a

masterful

job

of

showing

how

the

concept

of

totalitarianism

arose

between

the

wars

and

how

it

subsequently

played

out

in

American

academic

life.

10.

Jeanne

Kirkpatrick,

"Dictatorships

and

Double

Standards,"

Commentary

68,

no.

5

(1979).

11.

Robert

V.

Daniels,

ed. and

introduction,

The

Stalin

Revolution:

Fulfillment

or

Be

trayal

of

Communism?

(Boston,

1965;

in

later

editions

the

subtitle

became

Foundations

of

Soviet

Totalitarianism).

I

included

selections

from

Sheila

Fitzpatrick

in

the

3d

(1990)

and

4th

(1997)

editions.



5/7

708

Slavic

Review

gime

in

Stalin's

direction,

or

rather,

Stalin

adopted

Lenin's

heritage

as

the

basis for his

own

power.12

There is

a case

to

be

made,

following

Moshe

Lewin

and

Stephen

Cohen,

that

in

his

last months

Lenin

was

backing

away

from

revolutionary

violence and

that Nikolai Bukharin's

gradualist

(that

is,

revisionist )

approach

to

socialism

was

closer

to

Lenin's ultimate

think

ing.

My

own

investigation

of

Stalin's

"left

turn" of

1928-29

persuaded

me

that,

far

from

the

official

image

of

a

long-planned

revolutionary

push,

both

intensive

industrialization

and

collectivization

started

as

a

series

of

improvisations

intended

to

embarrass Bukharin and

the

Right

Opposi

tion.

Russia's

misfortune

was

that

these

steps,

once

adopted,

became

ends

in

themselves.13

Was

there,

in

this

era,

a

"cultural revolution" driven by social elements

from

below?

I

stumbled

on

the

idea

of

the cultural

revolution

as

far back

as

the

early

1950s,

thanks

to

the

interdisciplinary

cross-fertilization

en

couraged

at

the

Russian Research

Center,

and

I

published

a

paper

on

it.14

Even

then

there

was a

copious

literature

documenting

the

push

in

one

cultural

field

after

another

by super-Marxist

though

anti-intellectual

(or

"quasi-intellectual"15)

upstarts

to

get

the

party's imprimatur,

which

was

forthcoming

across

the

board

in

1929

and the

years

immediately

af

ter.

What

Fitzpatrick

omits from

her

reflections

(though

it

is

clear in her

major publications)

is

the

cultural

counterrevolution

that

followed the

cultural revolution, as early as 1932 in literature and across the board

by

1936,

as

the

activists

who

helped

the

party

get

control

of

culture

were re

pudiated

as

"anti-Marxist" and

ultimately

purged.

Fitzpatrick

is

absolutely

right

about

the

vydvizhentsy,

those

able

and

ambitious

but

compliant young

men

whom

Stalin

plucked

from

the

work

ing

class

and

the

peasantry

to

staff

his

bureaucracy.

Criticism of

her

dis

covery

of

this

element of

social

mobility

is

baffling.

Even

a

tyrant,

after

all,

has

to

find

his

"willing

executioners"

to

carry

out

his

will.

The

concept

of

the

vydvizhentsy,

in

fact,

is

even

more

productive

than

Fitzpatrick

has

pro

posed:

After

this

youthful

cadre

of

men

like

Leonid

Brezhnev

and

Aleksei

Kosygin

had filled the shoes of

the

purge

victims

in

the

later

1930s,

they

12.

See,

in

particular,

Sheila

Fitzpatrick,

"The Civil

War

as

a

Formative

Experience,"

in

Abbott

Gleason,

Peter

Kenez,

and

Richard

Stites,

eds.,

Bolshevik

Culture:

Experiment

and

Order

in the

Russian

Revolution

(Bloomington,

1985).

13.

Daniels,

Conscience

of

the

Revolution,

chap.

13. In

a

personal

bit

of

post-Soviet

re

visionism,

I

see

an

analogous

chain

of

ad hoc

decisions

by

Boris

El'tsin

in

the

course

of

his

feud

with

Mikhail

Gorbachev,

a

"perelom"

in

the

opposite

direction

of

radically

antisocialist

economics:

Robert V

Daniels,

"Per

Mosca

vedo

un

rischio

cileno,"

UUnit?

(Rome),

28

October

1992,

translated

as

"Interdependence,

or

a

Russian

Pinochet?" in

Daniels,

Russia's

Transformation:

Snapshots

of

a

Crumbling

System

(Lanham,

Md.,

1998),

chap.

29.

14.

Robert

V.

Daniels,

"Soviet

Thought

in

the 1930s:

An

Interpretive

Sketch,"

Indiana

Slavic

Studies

1

(1956),

reprinted

in

Daniels,

Trotsky,

Stalin,

and

Socialism

(Boulder,

Colo.,

1991),

condensed

as

"Stalin's

Cultural

Counterrevolution,"

in

Daniels,

Rise and

Fall

of

Com

munism,

chap.

20.

I

had

planned

to

develop

the

thesis

into

a

book,

but that

project

never

came

to

fruition.

15.

Daniels,

"Intellectuals

and

the

Russian

Revolution,"

American

Slavic

and

East Eu

ropean

Review

20,

no.

2

(April

1961): 270-78,

condensed

version

in

Daniels,

Rise

and

Fall

of

Communism,

chap.

4.



6/7

Revisionism

Avant la

Lettre

709

proceeded

as a

generation

to

grow

old

in

office,

and that

explains

both

the

continuity

and

the

pigheadedness

of the

Soviet

leadership

from the

death of

Stalin all the

way

down

to

the

advent

of

perestroika.16

I

experienced

old-fashioned

Marxist

revisionism

in

Italy

in the

1980s,

at

meetings

and conferences

with

scholars

from the

Italian

Left

(on

which

I

reported

at

the

annual

meeting

of

the

American

Association

for

the

Ad

vancement

of Slavic Studies

and in this

journal).17

The

high

point

of this

movement

came

in

1981,

when

Soviet

pressure

prompted

martial law

in

Poland.

"The

propulsive

force

that

had

its

origin

in

the

October

revolu

tion has

been

exhausted,"

declared

Enrico

Berlinguer,

secretary-general

of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).18

All this foreshadowed

the

for

mal

conversion

of

the PCI

majority

into

the

Democratic

Party

of

the

Left

(PDS)

in 1991.

Leading

the

effort

to

figure

out

how

the

Soviet

Union

had

ceased

to

deserve

the

support

of

the

western

Left

was

the

long-time

Moscow

cor

respondent

of

the

Italian Communist

daily

UUnit?,

Giuseppe

Boffa,

presi

dent,

by

the

1980s,

of the

small

PCI

foreign

policy

think

tank

CeSPI

(Cen

tro

Studi

di

Pol?tica

Internazionale,

still

going

today

as

an

independent

entity).

Boffa had

been

a

fan

of

Khrushchev

back

in his

Moscow

days,19

and

it

was

Khrushchev's

overthrow

that

set

him

on

the

path

to

revision

ism.

Boffa's

book

on

the

diverse

explanations

of

Stalinism

was a model of

analytical

clarity,

while

his

magnum

opus,

a

history

of

the

whole

Soviet

ex

perience,

was

a

landmark

exposition

of

the

changing

nature

of

the

Soviet

system

as

the

revolution

degenerated

under

Stalin.20

Giulietto

Chiesa,

a

successor

to

Boffa

as

UUnit?

correspondent

in

Moscow,

told

me

when

I

first

met

him there

in 1984

that

his

entr?e

as

the

de

facto ambassador

of

the

PCI had

revealed

to him that

"This

country

is

run

just

as

if

it

were

run

by

the

Mafia."21

That

line

tells

you

all

you really

need

to

know

about

both

Italian

communism

and

the

latter-day

Soviet

Union.

Revisionism

is

not

just

one

point

of

view;

most

broadly,

it

is

the

readi

ness to

change

your

views.

Historical

interpretation

is

a

work

of

the

imagi

nation,

and

the

best

history

is

bound

to

be

revisionist.

Naturally,

concep

tions

of

history

must

reflect

new

information

about

the

past,

such

as

that

gleaned

from the

opening

of

old

Soviet

archives

that

fed

the social

history

revisionism

in

the

1960s.

New

events?1991

above

all?demand

expia

16.

See

Daniels,

Rise and

Fall

of

Communism,

320-22.

17.

Robert

V.

Daniels,

"Eurocommunist

Views

of

the

Development

of the

Soviet

Sys

tem:

The PCI and

Stalinism,"

Slavic

Review

49,

no.

1

(Spring

1990):

109-15.

I

presented

an

earlier

version at the November 1988

meeting

of the American Association for the

Advancement

of Slavic

Studies

in

Honolulu.

18.

Enrico

Berlinguer

on

Italian

television

(RAI),

13 December

1981.

19. Chronicled

in his

book,

La

grande

svolta,

translated

into

English

as

Giuseppe

Boffa,

Inside

the Khrushchev

Era

(New

York,

1959).

20.

Giuseppe

Boffa,

II

fen?meno

Stalin

nella

storia

del

XX

sec?lo:

Le

interpretazioni

dello

Stalinismo

(Rome,

1982),

translated

as

The

Stalin

Phenomenon

(Ithaca,

1992);

and

Boffa,

Storia

deirUnione

Sovi?tica,

2

vols.

(Milan,

1976-79).

21.

Giulietto

Chiesa,

conversation

with

the

author,

Moscow,

April

1984.



7/7

710

Slavic

Review

nation and

put

the

past

in

a

new

light:

How does

the record

explain

the

breakdown

of

the

whole

Soviet

political,

economic,

and

imperial system

in

just

a

few

years?22

What is

now

left of old

notions

about

the life

history

of the

Soviet

regime?

Perforce,

we are

all revisionists

now.

22.

See

Daniels,

"Does the

Present

Change

the Past?"

Journal of

Modern

History

70,

no.

2

(June

1998):

431-35,

reworked

as

"Past

and

Present,"

in

Daniels,

Rise

and

Fall

of

Communism,

chap.

35.

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Robert V Daniels, Revisionism Avant la Lettre

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