Modernization from the Other Shore : American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development

Rating:
Summary: Out of this crooked timber of humanity...
Review: If one agrees that not everything about the Soviet Union was pre-ordained, then the collectivization was the crucial turning point. The brutality involved and the millions of deaths from the resulting famine was the greatest single atrocity of the Soviet regime, far outnumbering the victims of the purges. Not only did collectivization bring to fruition all the worst features of the Soviet regime such as gross brutality, callous indifference in the name of progress, the most fanatical and intolerant one-party culture, and the worst sort of bureaucratic mediocrity, it also burdened the Soviet Union with a crippled agricultural sector that it was never able to cure. And yet, at the time Americans knew little about it. The way that New York Times journalist Walter Duranty helped to euphemize the famine has become infamous.

But the problem was larger, much larger than the blindness of a few socialist intellectuals and the corruption of one spectacular journalist, as David Engerman points out in his important new book. One might imagine liberals and technocrats and socialists failing to appreciate the cruel truth. But what can we say about the attitude of Hoover's State Department? These people also showed little concern. Yet these people were so hostile to Communism they ensured that the United States was one of the few countries in the world that refused to recognize the Soviet Union. The problem, as Engerman details, arose from several key western prejudices, even if he does not fully recognize their complete importance. Americans were enthusiasts for progress and modernization. Many of them by the twenties were believers in a planned economy and this belief only increased with the Great Depression. The key problem for Russia and the later Soviet Union was that the overwhelming peasant population did not fit American plans for modernization, (or that of their rulers). For decades many Americans believed in a "national character" view of Russians that condemned them as "savage, hopeless, and helpless." There were exceptions, such as the first American translator of Tolstoy who uncritically supported czarism. And there were the supporters of American intervention in 1917 who deluded themselves into thinking that the Russian peasantry had swept aside Czarism in a wave of instinctive patriotism. But once the Soviets fell, the belief that the peasants had become lawless, anarchistic and hopeless was widespread. Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, believed that the Russians needed a strong firm hand from a right-wing dictator.

As the twenties progressed this chauvinist attitude was replaced by the more hopeful, universalistic attitudes as Russian Studies became professionalised and institutionalized in the nation's universities. But the view of the Russian peasant as hopelessly backward and "Asiatic" did not go away. There was a natural sympathy from many Americans towards the technocratic, modernizing plans of the Soviet state. In one of the most interesting chapters, there is a long discussion of how Duranty, Louis Fischer, Eugene Lyons and William Henry Chamberlin viewed the Soviet famines. Engerman shows how Lyons and Chamberlin, who became heroes on the American right for revealing the famine's existence, showed the same anti-peasant prejudices that Duranty and Fischer did. Based on dozens of sets of private papers, and including a helpful biographical essay, Engerman points out the weaknesses of both particularism, with its enormous condescension towards people of other countries, and of universalism, which tends to believe that people are identical, and especially identical with Americans. It is with his quotations of Herzen in his introduction that Engerman strikes the wrong note. "To sacrifice others, and to be self-sacrificing on their behalf, is too easy a virtue." Later on Engerman quotes Herzen's comparison of modern ideologies and panaceas to the great idol Moloch to which children were sacrificed by being burned alive. But it is not quite fair to say that Russophiles were asking Russians to make sacrifices they themselves were not going to make. After all, in their dreams of progress, they were assuming that the Russians would become "modern" and "progressive," like Americans themselves. There would therefore be no need for Americans to sacrifice for what they had already achieved. More important, the reason that contempt for the Russian peasantry crossed ideological lines was because they were not capitalist farmers. Had they been capitalist farmers with capitalist property their dispossession would have caused more outrage. But they weren't, so it didn't. More to the point, capitalist agricultural modernization going back to Robert Young and the proponents of enclosure argues that peasants hamper economic progress. Dispossessing them in one way or another has been a hallmark of capitalist growth for centuries, (never more so than in the past half-century as E.H. Hobsbawm's "The Age of Extremes" points out). Engerman's failure to really appreciate this is a weakness. He also fails to realize that in order to provide a more humane alternative of economic growth for the Soviet Union, an economic theory based on respecting peasants would have had to exist. And given the lack of experience in the United States for such a sympathy, that was not going to happen.

Rating:
Summary: Out of this crooked timber of humanity...
Review: If one agrees that not everything about the Soviet Union was pre-ordained, then the collectivization was the crucial turning point. The brutality involved and the millions of deaths from the resulting famine was the greatest single atrocity of the Soviet regime, far outnumbering the victims of the purges. Not only did collectivization bring to fruition all the worst features of the Soviet regime such as gross brutality, callous indifference in the name of progress, the most fanatical and intolerant one-party culture, and the worst sort of bureaucratic mediocrity, it also burdened the Soviet Union with a crippled agricultural sector that it was never able to cure. And yet, at the time Americans knew little about it. The way that New York Times journalist Walter Duranty helped to euphemize the famine has become infamous.

But the problem was larger, much larger than the blindness of a few socialist intellectuals and the corruption of one spectacular journalist, as David Engerman points out in his important new book. One might imagine liberals and technocrats and socialists failing to appreciate the cruel truth. But what can we say about the attitude of Hoover's State Department? These people also showed little concern. Yet these people were so hostile to Communism they ensured that the United States was one of the few countries in the world that refused to recognize the Soviet Union. The problem, as Engerman details, arose from several key western prejudices, even if he does not fully recognize their complete importance. Americans were enthusiasts for progress and modernization. Many of them by the twenties were believers in a planned economy and this belief only increased with the Great Depression. The key problem for Russia and the later Soviet Union was that the overwhelming peasant population did not fit American plans for modernization, (or that of their rulers). For decades many Americans believed in a "national character" view of Russians that condemned them as "savage, hopeless, and helpless." There were exceptions, such as the first American translator of Tolstoy who uncritically supported czarism. And there were the supporters of American intervention in 1917 who deluded themselves into thinking that the Russian peasantry had swept aside Czarism in a wave of instinctive patriotism. But once the Soviets fell, the belief that the peasants had become lawless, anarchistic and hopeless was widespread. Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, believed that the Russians needed a strong firm hand from a right-wing dictator.

As the twenties progressed this chauvinist attitude was replaced by the more hopeful, universalistic attitudes as Russian Studies became professionalised and institutionalized in the nation's universities. But the view of the Russian peasant as hopelessly backward and "Asiatic" did not go away. There was a natural sympathy from many Americans towards the technocratic, modernizing plans of the Soviet state. In one of the most interesting chapters, there is a long discussion of how Duranty, Louis Fischer, Eugene Lyons and William Henry Chamberlin viewed the Soviet famines. Engerman shows how Lyons and Chamberlin, who became heroes on the American right for revealing the famine's existence, showed the same anti-peasant prejudices that Duranty and Fischer did. Based on dozens of sets of private papers, and including a helpful biographical essay, Engerman points out the weaknesses of both particularism, with its enormous condescension towards people of other countries, and of universalism, which tends to believe that people are identical, and especially identical with Americans. It is with his quotations of Herzen in his introduction that Engerman strikes the wrong note. "To sacrifice others, and to be self-sacrificing on their behalf, is too easy a virtue." Later on Engerman quotes Herzen's comparison of modern ideologies and panaceas to the great idol Moloch to which children were sacrificed by being burned alive. But it is not quite fair to say that Russophiles were asking Russians to make sacrifices they themselves were not going to make. After all, in their dreams of progress, they were assuming that the Russians would become "modern" and "progressive," like Americans themselves. There would therefore be no need for Americans to sacrifice for what they had already achieved. More important, the reason that contempt for the Russian peasantry crossed ideological lines was because they were not capitalist farmers. Had they been capitalist farmers with capitalist property their dispossession would have caused more outrage. But they weren't, so it didn't. More to the point, capitalist agricultural modernization going back to Robert Young and the proponents of enclosure argues that peasants hamper economic progress. Dispossessing them in one way or another has been a hallmark of capitalist growth for centuries, (never more so than in the past half-century as E.H. Hobsbawm's "The Age of Extremes" points out). Engerman's failure to really appreciate this is a weakness. He also fails to realize that in order to provide a more humane alternative of economic growth for the Soviet Union, an economic theory based on respecting peasants would have had to exist. And given the lack of experience in the United States for such a sympathy, that was not going to happen.