LECTURE TWO

1
LECTURE TWO

• Russian Roots

2
Continuity Theory

• Keenan, Pipes, Poe (Malia)
• Sui generis
• Remaining differences
• Relation to Europe
• Success Story
• Poor initial conditions
• Should have vanished
• Global superpower
• Price of Success
• Rational in 15th century
• Burden in the 21st

3
Mental Baggage

• Understanding Russia (travel accounts)
• Authoritarian
• Expansionistic
• Messianistic
• Bashing Russia
• Asiatic despotism
• Scratch a Russian
• Poes point of departure
• Russia is Russia, not Europe

4
Slavs to Rus

• Unclear origins
• Carpathians?
• Fateful choice of agriculture
• Hunters, gatherers
• Varangian protection racket
• Vikings no state builders
• Eurasian empire
• Hudson Bay Company
• Mongol devastation
• Humiliation, mythology

5
Rus to Russia

• Kiev to Moscow
• Rome to Aachen
• Sarai to Moscow
• Muscovy independent
• Choice of role model
• Mongols or Byzantium
• Gathering the lands
• Principalities, Khanates
• Novgorod, Lithuania
• Third Rome
• Constantinople 1453
• Muscovy isolated, only true Christians

6
Early Modern Era

• Historical Accident
• Bad location
• Bad timing, Rise of the West
• Renaissance in the West
• Science, cannons, navigation
• Xenophobia in Muscovy
• Large monastery, illiteracy, orthodoxy
• Pre-modern kingdom
• Obsolete in Europe
• All other crushed by Europe
• Muscovy survives (1612, 1812, 1941, 1991?)

7
Explanations

• Geography
• Close to powerful enemies (Ming, Ottomans)
• Open coastlines (Inkas, Aztecs)
• Muscovy protected, massive hinterland
• Autocracy
• No formal constraints
• Tradition before the law
• Boiars as voluntary slaves
• Survival for the weak
• Mobilization
• Closed borders
• Full control
• All resources at the rulers disposal

8
Development

• Early modern kingdom
• Complex admin, semi-public sphere
• Proto-industrial, gunpowder, cannon
• Contrasts
• Evolution in Europe, no clear beginning
• Russia response to Europe, led from above
• Forced social engineering
• No models to copy, build ab novo
• Extraction, monopolar public sphere, no
  participation
• State control, markets, initiative, technology
• Blessing or a curse?
• Locked into success
• Static, unchanging

9
Enlightenment and Emancipation

• Ruling elite (bureaucracy)
• Remain in power
• Warriors, merchants, parts of the state
• Threat from Europe (legitimacy)
• Discuss liberal reform
• Autocracy only defense
• Europeans always coming
• Weak society
• State absorbs society, command, mobilization
• State-led reforms, counter threats, preserve
  autocracy
• Cultural anchors
• Russian Tradition, Slavophiles, mock Europeans
• Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality
• ? Russia did not fail!

10
Early Modern to Modern

• Modern European States
• End of 18th century, global imperialism
• Russia unaware, defeat Napoleon, feeling of moral
  superiority
• Crimean War a shock, backward, lost faith
• Reforms, Russia on the move, Martin Malia
• End of the Russian Empire
• 1904-05 war against Japan, democratic
  parenthesis
• Bolsheviks, civil war, touch and go
• The Soviet System
• State back in focus, no politics or rights
• Closed borders, xenophobia, end of public debate
• All productive assets at state disposal
• ? USSR is Muscovy!

11
Remarkable Story

• Slaves to Rus
• Survival against all odds
• Muscovy
• Great power against all odds
• Drawn into Europe
• Solution
• Autocracy
• Command economy
• State-led militarization
• Implications
• Trapped in success
• Systemic change?