The French Revolution and the Russian Anti-Democratic Tradition

A Case of False Consciousness

Dmitry Shlapentokh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351292740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The political uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rejection of the revolutionary model has brought Russian political thought full circle as democratic forces contend with authoritarian nationalism. This volume is essential to understanding the antidemocratic tradition in Russia and the persistent danger of totalitarianism.

Part I

The Great Rehearsal (1905-1917)

Introduction to Part I

The 1905 Revolution marked a new period in Russian history in general and in the approach of Russian society toward the French Revolution in particular.

It was the first time in Russian history that Russia experienced a revolution similar to the French. The entire period of the 1905 Revolution (1905-1907) was marked by fierce struggle between the defenders of the Russian monarchy and the forces of the opposition. The so-called “Bloody Sunday”—a shooting of peaceful demonstrators by government troops—marked the Revolution’s beginning. “Bloody Sunday” was followed by an uprising in the army and navy. The Revolution culminated in the December uprising in Moscow (1905) when government troops fought fiercely with workers’ detachments. Pressure from below compelled the government to summon the Duma, the first Russian parliament, where both defenders and opponents of tsardom exercised their eloquence to support their views. The country was in deep political crisis until February, 1917, when the monarchy finally collapsed.

Throughout the entire nineteenth century, as in other countries of Eastern Europe, Russia experienced “Westernization” through urbanization and the steady erosion of semifeudal relationships in the countryside. This social and economic Westernization, however, did not always correspond with ideological Westernization in the sense that many Russian intellectuals did not always acknowledge the process. They flatly denied the serious relevance of the Western experience to the destiny of their own country and turned to native history to explain political development. The 1905 Revolution could have been explained in the context of that native history. Yet this was not the case in Russia where the “revolution” (the violent attempt to overthrow the existing political order) was historically connected with the West and its democratic traditions. Consequently, Russia’s political explosion paralleled the explosion of ideological “Occidentophilism.” There was a tremendous rise in popularity of the idea that Russia and the West possessed many similarities, and the extreme popularity of the French Revolution was one of the most important indicators of this.

There were no groups in Russian society at that time that denied at least the partial relevance of the French Revolution to Russian political reality. Those disagreeing with the assumption that there were similarities between political developments in Russia and Europe, especially in France, stressed the economic and political differences between the 1905 Revolution and the French Revolution, rather than emphasizing only the cultural differences between Russia and the West as was the case before.

Undoubtedly, Russian society between 1905 and 1917 underwent political and socioeconomic modernization or “Westernization.” Yet these changes were far from drastic. The peasantry, the vast majority of the country’s population, had no interest in political liberties, and while some sections of the rapidly growing urban proletariat demonstrated political maturity and the ability for self-organization, others (most of whom were first-generation workers) had no understanding of Western-style freedom and confused freedom with anarchy. The Russian bourgeoisie, though more politically active, still lacked political experience, having been tightly bound by autocracy for centuries. They were hardly willing to lead a democratic movement. In short, Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century was more predisposed to either an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime.

The similarities of Russia to European countries, which in the majority enjoyed a democratic tradition, were superficial by their very nature. Yet the majority of Russian intellectuals overestimated the similarities between Russia and the West and underestimated the chances for either an authoritarian or totalitarian outcome for Russia’s political struggles. The popularity of images from the French Revolution (the symbol of the Western way of development) represented the emergence of a “false consciousness,” in which the perception of the country’s future had nothing to do with the real course of the country’s history. The explosive character of the Westernization of Russian intellectual life and the sudden and rapid spread of the idea that by emulating the French Revolution, Russia was following the Western pattern of development, had other repercussions for the Russian perception of the French Revolution and social scientists’ treatment of the subject.

Perhaps if Russian Westernization would have continued its slow pace, the development of Russian historical science in general and the study of the French Revolution in particular would have been similar to the development of historical science in other European countries. This process would be as follows: social science would become more professional in the sense that historical science would be separated from literary and semiliterary work, and highly specialized scholarly monographs would be the main vehicle of spreading historical knowledge, including that about the French Revolution. This way of conveying historical knowledge through monographs and scholarly articles focusing on a particular aspect of historical phenomena is due to the following: first, this is an indication of a high level of the development of social science; second, it represents a certain type of political development in society. It demonstrates that political life is intensive enough that precise scholarly analysis of social and political processes, both in the present and in the past, is required to understand it. At the same time the conveyance of historical knowledge through scholarly monographs and articles implies a certain stability in the pattern of political behavior. In this situation, social scientists are not concerned with alternative political development, but rather with understanding the political situation as it exists. They do not see the alternatives, especially if they are quite different from one another, in the present. Consequently, they do not see them in the past. This was the case with historical research in the modern West where political life was comparatively stable and the opposition rarely provided a drastic alternative to the political establishment. It was in the modern West that historical knowledge was mostly conveyed through scholarly monographs and articles.

The situation in Russia in the very beginning of the twentieth century, while having some similarities to that of modern European societies, was nevertheless, different in many respects. The violent revolutionary upheaval, started by the 1905 Revolution, brought political life to Russia. Even when the uprising was finally crushed by tsarist troops, the political tranquillity and passivity of the majority of the population was never restored. From then on political parties of the various political groups were not submissive objects of governmental intervention as was the case in previous periods. Social and political interactions were taken into account. Social life was to be studied in all of its concreteness, both by representatives of tsardom as well as by members of the opposition. Such changes in the approach to the present affected the approach to the past as well. Consequently, the focus was not on an impressionistic and abstract image of the past, but on social analysis with an interest in details and historical particulars. There was also less interest in incorporating the French Revolution into the context of world history. From this perspective, this Russian intellectual approach to the past and the French Revolution was similar to that of modern Western European intellectuals. Yet the Russian intellectuals’ approach to the past enjoyed its own specificity.

“Westernization” of the Russian social sciences was not the result of deep-rooted, objective, socioeconomic processes (i.e., the rise of the economic and cultural level of Russian society) and subsequent bettering of the social sciences through the progressive accumulation of new data, the sharpening of research techniques, and experimentation with different approaches. Rather it was due to a revolutionary upheaval with external similarities to European revolutions (mostly French) and the Russians’ traditional identification of these revolutions as Western phenomena. The development of the study of the French Revolution was a direct response to political developments in the country when particular phenomena of the past (the French Revolution) started to be immersed, so to speak, in the present. The specialized monographs and scholarly articles had only an indirect connection with political reality and did not always provide direct comparison of the past with the present. While scholarly work on the French Revolution played an important role in shaping Russian society’s image of the French Revolution, the work of journalists and popular brochures played an even greater role. These vehicles made no attempt to be impartial and openly meshed the past into the present. Due to the often highly polemical character of these works they were emotionally colored. This, however, did not prevent the authors of these popular works from engaging in sophisticated sociological analysis.

The other important aspect of early twentieth-century Russian intellectuals’ approach to history in general and the French Revolution in particular was their interest in the dynamic aspects of historical phenomena. They were interested in how historical phenomena changed over the course of time. From this point of view, the approach of Russian intellectuals was different both from that of the majority of present-day scholars with their often static picture of narrowly focused historical phenomena, as well as from that of late nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals. The image of the French Revolution in the works of Russian intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century was not dynamic. The image of the French Revolution was incorporated into a dynamic picture of the entire human history as one of its episodes. Yet the image of the French Revolution per se was static because no attention was paid to details and the entire French Revolution was viewed as a homogeneous phenomena. Such an approach to the French Revolution often stemmed from the abstract and global philosophical approach to the past where the French Revolution was incorporated into the “big picture” of world history. When Russian intellectuals detached the French Revolution from the “big picture” of world history, they started to pay attention to details of the Revolution with a strong interest in the dynamics of the historical process.

While viewing a historical phenomenon such as the French Revolution as a dynamic process, many Russian intellectuals were also concerned with alternatives of historical development in general and individual historical phenomena in particular. The majority of modern Western monographs and scholarly articles, as well as the works of Russian intellectuals of the end of the nineteenth century, focused on analyzing the past and present as it is and as it was; however, Russian intellectuals during the beginning of the twentieth century were interested in the history that might have been.

This interest in alternative scripts for the French Revolution, employed to substantiate points about the Russian Revolution, led to an interest in the influence of political strategies, of political leaders, and of accidents (which were labeled by Marxists as the “subjective factor”) on the revolutionary process and the development of world history in general. This approach to the past was shared by the majority of Russian intellectuals of this period including those who, having regarded themselves as Marxists, stressed the importance of objective and impersonal historical forces (e.g., development of “productive forces”). This emphasis on the flexibility of the historical process implied that a political leader or leaders, armed with the proper political theory and possessing the wisdom and aptitude to gauge the proper moment, faced few obstacles in guiding a revolution’s development. The belief in the force of the “subjective factor” differentiated early twentieth-century Russian intellectuals from late nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals, when even the Populists, many of whom preached the crucial role of “critically thinking personalities,” approached world history in general and the revolutionary process in particular fatalistically.

The popularity of the belief in the flexibility of the revolutionary process and in the many alternative routes available was due to distinctive political developments of the time. This situation differed drastically from that faced by the generation preceding the 1905 Revolution. It also differed from the situation they would face in the future during the 1917 Revolution.

The end of the nineteenth century was not only a period of comparative political stability (the time of the Great Reforms might be the only exception) but also a time when a strong autocratic government made involvement in political life impossible for the great majority of the population. In order for change to occur, it had to take place at the top, rather than among the populace. This was translated in the minds of Russian intellectuals into a powerful, impersonal force that drove history. This theory was espoused even by those who believed in the theory of “critical thinking personalities” that stressed the individual’s role in directing historical development.

While practically all Russian intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century were imbued with fatalistic feelings towards history, the intellectuals at the time of the 1917 Revolution felt differently. Those who felt that they were losing ground thought history was propelled by impersonal historical forces. Yet those who were at the helm of power had an opposite view and thought that the historical process in general and the revolutionary process in particular were quite f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: The Great Rehearsal (1905-1917)
• Part II: The Enactment (1917-1922)
• Selected Bibliography
• Index