[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1998), Why (not) use the
cultural approach? Review of Tucker, Part II www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/980210.htm]
Why (not) use the cultural approach?
Review of Tucker, Part II
by Hans O. Melberg
Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev
Robert C. Tucker
W.W. Norton, New York/London, 1987
ISBN: 0 393 02489 X
214 pages
Click to read part I
Lenin as a patient tutor
One of the main themes of Tucker's book, is that Lenin's vision was that the party had to
overcome the cultural obstacles to development by patiently teaching the people. He writes
about "Lenin's Bolshevism as party-taught, party-led culture-building culture"
and that "In Lenin's Bolshevism ... the party was conceived as a collective tutor for
the worker-peasant masses of the people" (p. 204). To me this is unconvincing.
Lenin's Bolshevism was not just a "long run persuasion" or a "pedagogical
process" (p. 47). First, the change in culture was not the aim, but the means
to achieve an end. Moreover, in order to "educate" the people, he had to
maintain power, and to do so he used more than pedagogical devices. Third, Lenin's
emphasis on the long run seems a bit exaggerated, when one learns that the long-run meant
within 25 years - a rather short time to create Paradise as long as the means is supposed
to be done by mere teaching. Finally, consider the following quotation used by Tucker to
support his case that Lenin favoured educational rather than coercive means:
"the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only the use of force against
exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force" (Lenin in an article from May 1919,
quoted by Tucker on p. 83).
Surely, the "not only" and "not even mainly" does not exclude the
use of (much) coercion. Moreover, recent revelations from the archives also document that
Lenin in no sense was a patient and non-violent tutor.
In sum, I believe Tucker's emphasis is wrong in two ways. First it is wrong to present
the change of culture as the aim, since it was only a means. Second, it is wrong to
present Lenin as engaged in a patient educational effort, since coercion and impatience
was a large part of the project.
Incorrect?
Sometimes I thought Tucker's arguments were either wrong or very difficult to understand.
Consider, for instance, Tucker's statement that the USSR was "Second only to the
United States in gross national product ..." (p. 130). First, this might be true if
he uses the official USSR figures, but as he surely knows there is little reason to trust
these figures. Second, the figures have to be converted into comparable dollar terms (or a
similar scale), but this - clearly - cannot be done using the official exchange rate of
the time (since it was greatly overvalued). Having done this the GDP of Japan, China and
possibly several other natiousn, would probably be bigger than that of the USSR.
As an example of an argument I found difficult to understand, consider the following
quotations:
"I hold that Stalinism must be recognized as an historically distinct and specific
phenomenon which did not flow directly from Leninism, although Leninism was an important
contributory factor" (p. 73).
"Stalinist Soviet culture that, paradoxically, involved at once the full-scale
sovietization of Russian society and the Russification of the Soviet culture" (p.
95).
As for Stalinism, I do not understand how one can argue that Lenin can be such an
important contributory cause and still argue that Stalin was an unfortunate accident (see
also p. 58). Of course, there is no analytic or mathematical connection between the two,
but people arguing that Staling was a "logical" outcome does not hold that it
there was no way nothing else could have happened. It is simply a question of how likely
something is, and in my opinion it was likely that something like Stalin would come to
power in the kind of system created by Lenin. As for the second quotation, I simply failed
to understand it. It is one thing to say that the system that emerged was a mix of
ideology and culture, but to say that both variables completely dominate each other is
beyond my comprehension.
Lastly, I think Tucker is wrong when he says that the West should have supported
Gorbachev and his reforms (p. 137, p. 207) or, even worse, when he pins his hopes on
Gorbachev as a world saviour (p. 206). On the contrary, I believe it was important to keep
the pressure on the USSR to make it change. Moreover, I think it would have been bad if
Gorbachev had managed to save the system since his vision was not a nice social
democracy.
Good?
There are two themes that I have not touched upon in this review. First, his comments
about leadership, second his emphasis on the importance of socio-political movements.
Tucker writes, for instance that:
"Political science, in my view, has overconcentrated on the workings of
established polities and given too little systematic attention to socio-political
movements" (p. 16).
I am not sure he is right that political science has underconcentrated on this, but I
agree that it is valuable to focus on socio-political movements.
Let me, finally, add a last point about the cultural approach. In the introduction I
said that I did not quite understand what this cultural approach meant (unless it was an
explanatory variable). After writing this review, I now believe there is one possible
perspective that I have not examined enough: To view events in Soviet history as examples
of attempts by the rulers to change the attitudes and behaviour of its citizens. In this
sense one might speak of a cultural approach or pattern; From Lenin and up to Gorbachev
the leadership constantly tried to create a new Soviet Man. As Tucker writes Lenin tried
to "carry out the 'cultural revolution' needed in order to educate the Russian
peasant to the advantages of the cooperative way" (p. 47). The same point is also
repeatedly emphasised when discussing Gorbachev (see p. 149-157, p. 188-189). This might
be a perspective that "unifies" much of Soviet history, but I don't think it
explains everything (or anything?; to discover a pattern is a descriptive task).
Conclusion
In the introduction Tucker writes that "The most one could say in favour of the
cultural approach" is that "all the others are worse" (p. 10). I do not
think the collection of essays in this book proves this point. The alternative approaches
are seldom explored - as one would have to do if one wants to say that one approach is
better than the other. This applies both if one wants to use culture as an explanatory
variable and if one wants to use culture as a frame.
[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1998), Why (not) use the
cultural approach? Review of Tucker, Part II www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/980210.htm]