What is important and what is true

What is important and what is true?

Textbooks on the history of the Soviet Union (1917-1991)

by Hans O. Melberg

(hansom@online.no)

Ronald Grigor Suny
The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States

New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

540 pages, ISBN: 0-19-508105-6

Introduction

A good textbook in history should give the reader a correct analysis of the most important facts and events. This immediately raises two problems since there is disagreement both on what should count as "most important" as well as on which analysis true. Is the history of the living conditions of masses should more important than the debates and intrigues among the elite? Was ideology or circumstances the true driving force of the Soviet system? Of course, the answer to these questions is one of degrees. I believe Suny's mix of emphasis is most correct on the first, but less on the second. That is, he is not far from the correct balance between social history and Kremlinology, but in my view he does not put enough emphasis on ideology as an explanatory variable.

In addition to the first two criteria, a textbook should be judged by stylistic criteria, that is language, structure, presentation and so on. Once again Suny's book is good, but not perfect. It is too long (500 dense and large pages not counting the index and the chronology), but it is well written and structured. The occasional jokes, anecdotes and photographs make the length slightly less frightening, but as a textbook it is still too long. Finally, a more substantive stylistic criticism concerns the misunderstood view that a textbook should be "neutral." Attempted neutrality often makes a book boring. More seriously it is worse to have concealed bias than open arguments. Worst of all, it does not teach students how to argue for a thesis, which is what we want them to be able to do after a university cause. To do so they must read open arguments and disagreements.

To substantiate the arguments made in this introduction, I shall first give some brief quotations to indicate Suny's general approach. The next three sections correspond to my three criteria for judging a textbook. First, what is included and excluded. Second, the truth of the causal claims. Third, the style.

Suny's general argument

The structure and main argument and conclusion of the book is quite clearly stated in the preface and on the last page:

Structure

"In overall design this history of the Soviet Union is conceived as the story of three revolutions, each identified with a single individual: the revolution of 1917, in which Vladimir Lenin played a key role and that founded the Soviet political order; Joseph Stalin's revolution of the 1930s, which forged the statist economic system that the west would call 'totalitarian' and the Soviet leaders would identify as 'socialism'; and Mikhail Gorbachev's revolution (1985-91), which tried to dismantle the Stalinist legacy and ended by undermining the Leninist heritage as well." (xiii)

Argument

"This book is an attempt to recover the complexities and contradictions of the seventy years of Soviet power, its real achievements and grotesque failings. Rather than seeing Soviet history as moving inexorable toward a preordained end, made inexorable because of the impossibility of realizing the original utopian vision, this history of the Soviet Union seeks to show the false starts and unintended results of the Soviet experience, as well as the ways in which human will and effort are able to transform society. If there is an overall thesis, it is that Soviet achievements produced the factors that eventually led to its decline and collapse." (xv)

Conclusion

"The great achievement of the Soviet experioment was the rough modernization of a backward agrarian society. Soviet power industrialized, urbanized, and educated a mass society through the exercise of state power on a mobilized population. But social and economic modernization resulted in an incomplete modern society. The modernity achieved by 1985 did not include democratic institutions, a legally sanctioned civil society, the rule of law, or a consumer-driven economy." (505)

Included and excluded?

One of the major advantages of this book is its comprehensiveness. There are chapters on social and cultural history as well as the rivalry in the elite. We learn about the favourite movies in the 1950s (...), how the position of women changed over time (...), the life of the intelligentisia and so on. Moreover the author is clearly aware that the history of the Soviet Union also must mention the non-russians (the awareness is not surprising considering Suny's many books on the history of the non-Russians in the Soviet Union). It also presents very recent news, like the advances of the Taliban in Afganistan and the experiences of Yeltsin's second term as president. Finally it covers both foreign and internal policy.

There are, however, both imbalances and missing topics. The Bolshevik anti-religious campaigns are not covered very well. For instance, Khruschev's quite vicious anti-religion is not mentioned, nor is Gorbachev's more moderate campaigns. Ideology is not treated very extensively, nor is economics. As I shall argue in the next section I consider this to be a serious omission because the "experiment" was fundamentally one of trying a completely new economic system. The history of the USSR is thus one of how the attempt to implement an utopian ideology (quite predictably?) led to events such as War Communism, NEP, Stalinism/totalitarianism, Cold War, stagnation, attempted reform and ultimately collapse. In this perspective it becomes important to know exactly what their ideological "plan" was, as well as the economic theory that made the plan fail. Suny does not discuss either in any systematic fashion.

Not missing, however, is the Stalin era. Suny spends more than two-hundred pages and eight chapters on the about thirty years Stalin were in power. In contrast he thinks Brezhnev's more than twenty years is worth twenty-five pages in one chapter. Of course, it is wrong to demand that the number of pages should correspond to the number of years, but in this case I think it indicates an imbalance. One could argue that Stalin laid the foundations of the system that Brezhnev mainly continued to work within. Yet, the Brezhnev era would also be a perfect point to introduce the missing discussion about exactly why the communist economic system was bound to stagnate when the limits of extensive growth was reached. A discussion along these lines would have improved both the balance of the book.

Lastly, there are some omissions of a more formal nature. There is no list of abbreviations, which is unfortunate since many students find it hard to remember that VhitK stands for ..... and so on. Moreover, while there is a list for suggested readings after each chapter, there are no footnotes or mention of sources. Sometimes this is of great significance. For instance, I always like to know source of literacy rates and GDP growth since both tend to differ depending on the political views of the source. The issue is also related to the aim of teaching students how to write, since they are required to name their sources and use footnotes a textbook should lead the way by example. To end this section on "Included vs. Excluded" on a brighter note, one may note the useful chronology that appears towards the end of the book.

Part II follows later ....