How Russia Shaped the Modern World : From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism

Rating:
Summary: Don't be Put off by the Title
Review: Don't be put off by the title, this book by Steven Marks covers new ground which should please both academics and the general public. While the thesis behind the book at first seems all encompassing, each chapter builds a case in detail bringing together several seemingly unrelated strands.

The book is well researched and very readable. It makes accessible little known facts about anarchists, expressionism, dance and politics. The chapter on the origins of the Protocols of Zion is not to be missed, Marks objectively tells the story of the single most influential Anti Semitic documents of the 20th Century.

I'd recommend this book as an addition to both a personal library and/or a college level text.

Rating:
Summary: Bland, but tendentious
Review: Great histories often leave readers asking new questions. But the only question one asks on reading this book is why Princeton University Press bothered to publish it. The thesis of Marks' book is a simple one. The modern world has been seriously influenced by such Russian phenomenon as the contrasting anarchisms of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Russian Ballet and Russian Modern Art, and the cursed progeny of Russian Anti-Semitism and Soviet Communism. You don't say. It strikes me as a truism that any large and important country would have at some point in its long history have a major impact on the rest of the world.

As it happens, Marks's book is even less impressive than that summary suggests. Consider the question of influence. Would the same thing have happened had Russian never existed? Marks' first chapter deals with the problem of anarchism. He argues that Bakunin and the vile, sinister Nechayev were the prototypes of the modern terrorist. There is some truth to this. But let us consider that Proudhon, not Bakunin, was more the father of anarchism. Or that conspiratorial cliques owe their existence to Babeuf, Blanqui and the Carbonnari. Or that the importance of the Fenians, who assassinated a Canadian cabinet minister before Bakunin even met Nechayev. Or that the Ku Klux Klan committed far worse terrorist outrages than all the anarchist groups put together. Likewise would the rise of jazz in Europe really have been delayed if, as Marks suggests, the example of Diaghilev and his "primitive" ballet had not been there to encourage things? Can one really say that Mumford's municipal planning or the ecological movement would not exist were it not for Kropotkin? Tolstoy did not invent pacifism, so do we really have to read a potted history of Gandhi and the civil rights movement?

A second problem is the book's deep mediocrity. Marks is not an interesting writer. He shows no great critical skills, has looked at no new original sources, and makes no profound claims. The chapter on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not really an improvement on Norman Cohn's three and a half decade old classic. Although he is writing about two of the greatest novelists who ever lived he quotes next to nothing from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky that is interesting, witty or profound. What we do have is a long list of people who admired these two writers, something we really didn't need to prove. Moreover what he does write is infected with cliché: "Dostoevsky's fiction encapsulates the convulsive dynamism and instability of his own life and the rapidly changing world he lived in." ""The heroes of Dostoevsky's writings scream out in the torment of urban life..." He writes of Dostoevsky's Orthodoxy so much as an "Eastern" religion one might think it had more in common with Hinduism than Protestantism. And Joyce's "Ulysses" does NOT "urge submission to a God-ordered world..."

The third and most important problem is Marks' theoretical framework. For Marks is not simply portraying any kind of Russian influence. He is arguing that Russians are the carriers, like bacteria, of anti-modernizing impulses. This thesis relies on the whole "modernization" paradigm of the sixties and seventies which saw an unproblematic relationship between the rise of capitalism, liberalism, democracy, industrialism and Anglo-American dominance, and insinuated that any opposition to this could be dismissed as primitive and irrational. This paradigm has been thoroughly attacked by hordes of scholars such as Eley, Blackbourn, Sperber, Berenson, Segalen, Lih, Rosenberg, Shanin, Lears, Scott, and many, many others. It unproblematically assumes that Russia, both before and after 1917, can be described as simply unmodern and unEuropean. There is no problem for Marks that Tolstoy supposedly inspires both pacifists and Nazi psychopaths, because there is not that much difference between left and right. So we get statements such that both Dostoevsky and the revolutionaries both disliked cities, or that Tolstoy was opposed to parliamentary democracy, non-existent in the Russia of his lifetime and not much evident elsewhere on the continent. Having noticed that Henry Ford was the leading American anti-semite, Marks argues that he was really antimodern. He also says Mussolini and Hitler were "anticapitalist" on the basis of little evidence. The last pages on Communism and the Third World are especially shallow, with Communism the basis for dictators as different as Attaruk and Mobutu. Communism is blamed for almost everything that has done wrong with the Third World since independence. This is based on statements such as his claim that with the exception of the Indian/Pakistan wars, "every major war between Third World protagonist before the 1990s was started by a state armed by the Soviet Union." Leaving aside that most third world wars were and are civil wars, this is patently untrue, since Israel clearly started the 1956 and 1982 wars, and the 1967 war as well. And what about the Falklands war, the attacks on East Timor and the Spanish Sahara, or Zairean/South African intervention that started the Angolan Civil war, or the way the United States was responsible for both the Vietnam War and the widening of the war to Laos and Cambodia? One is reminded in reading this of Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance." It was not that good a book, but at least it was more fun.

Rating:
Summary: Bland, but tendentious
Review: Great histories often leave readers asking new questions. But the only question one asks on reading this book is why Princeton University Press bothered to publish it. The thesis of Marks' book is a simple one. The modern world has been seriously influenced by such Russian phenomenon as the contrasting anarchisms of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Russian Ballet and Russian Modern Art, and the cursed progeny of Russian Anti-Semitism and Soviet Communism. You don't say. It strikes me as a truism that any large and important country would have at some point in its long history have a major impact on the rest of the world.

As it happens, Marks's book is even less impressive than that summary suggests. Consider the question of influence. Would the same thing have happened had Russian never existed? Marks' first chapter deals with the problem of anarchism. He argues that Bakunin and the vile, sinister Nechayev were the prototypes of the modern terrorist. There is some truth to this. But let us consider that Proudhon, not Bakunin, was more the father of anarchism. Or that conspiratorial cliques owe their existence to Babeuf, Blanqui and the Carbonnari. Or that the importance of the Fenians, who assassinated a Canadian cabinet minister before Bakunin even met Nechayev. Or that the Ku Klux Klan committed far worse terrorist outrages than all the anarchist groups put together. Likewise would the rise of jazz in Europe really have been delayed if, as Marks suggests, the example of Diaghilev and his "primitive" ballet had not been there to encourage things? Can one really say that Mumford's municipal planning or the ecological movement would not exist were it not for Kropotkin? Tolstoy did not invent pacifism, so do we really have to read a potted history of Gandhi and the civil rights movement?

A second problem is the book's deep mediocrity. Marks is not an interesting writer. He shows no great critical skills, has looked at no new original sources, and makes no profound claims. The chapter on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not really an improvement on Norman Cohn's three and a half decade old classic. Although he is writing about two of the greatest novelists who ever lived he quotes next to nothing from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky that is interesting, witty or profound. What we do have is a long list of people who admired these two writers, something we really didn't need to prove. Moreover what he does write is infected with cliché: "Dostoevsky's fiction encapsulates the convulsive dynamism and instability of his own life and the rapidly changing world he lived in." ""The heroes of Dostoevsky's writings scream out in the torment of urban life..." He writes of Dostoevsky's Orthodoxy so much as an "Eastern" religion one might think it had more in common with Hinduism than Protestantism. And Joyce's "Ulysses" does NOT "urge submission to a God-ordered world..."

The third and most important problem is Marks' theoretical framework. For Marks is not simply portraying any kind of Russian influence. He is arguing that Russians are the carriers, like bacteria, of anti-modernizing impulses. This thesis relies on the whole "modernization" paradigm of the sixties and seventies which saw an unproblematic relationship between the rise of capitalism, liberalism, democracy, industrialism and Anglo-American dominance, and insinuated that any opposition to this could be dismissed as primitive and irrational. This paradigm has been thoroughly attacked by hordes of scholars such as Eley, Blackbourn, Sperber, Berenson, Segalen, Lih, Rosenberg, Shanin, Lears, Scott, and many, many others. It unproblematically assumes that Russia, both before and after 1917, can be described as simply unmodern and unEuropean. There is no problem for Marks that Tolstoy supposedly inspires both pacifists and Nazi psychopaths, because there is not that much difference between left and right. So we get statements such that both Dostoevsky and the revolutionaries both disliked cities, or that Tolstoy was opposed to parliamentary democracy, non-existent in the Russia of his lifetime and not much evident elsewhere on the continent. Having noticed that Henry Ford was the leading American anti-semite, Marks argues that he was really antimodern. He also says Mussolini and Hitler were "anticapitalist" on the basis of little evidence. The last pages on Communism and the Third World are especially shallow, with Communism the basis for dictators as different as Attaruk and Mobutu. Communism is blamed for almost everything that has done wrong with the Third World since independence. This is based on statements such as his claim that with the exception of the Indian/Pakistan wars, "every major war between Third World protagonist before the 1990s was started by a state armed by the Soviet Union." Leaving aside that most third world wars were and are civil wars, this is patently untrue, since Israel clearly started the 1956 and 1982 wars, and the 1967 war as well. And what about the Falklands war, the attacks on East Timor and the Spanish Sahara, or Zairean/South African intervention that started the Angolan Civil war, or the way the United States was responsible for both the Vietnam War and the widening of the war to Laos and Cambodia? One is reminded in reading this of Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance." It was not that good a book, but at least it was more fun.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling new look at Russia's impact on the modern world
Review: How Russia Shaped the Modern World is a significant work of historical research and synthesis which will have a major impact not only on the field of Soviet history but on how historians understand the cultural history of the 20th century as a whole. Marks' project examines the multifarious influences Russia and the Soviet Union have had on the political, cultural, and artistic development of the world. The scope of the work is very broad, yet his research on every aspect of the topic is painstakingly careful and thorough, drawing on primary and secondary sources in Russian, German, French, Dutch, and English.

Marks is skillful at tracing subtle intellectual influences and elusive cultural connections; in the process, he illuminates the broad, transnational frames of reference within which many of this century's most important ideological and artistic movements developed. His explorations of topics such as the links among Tolstoy, Gandhi, and the American civil rights movement, the impact of Dostoevsky on the modernist movement, and the connections among Kropotkin, the British arts and crafts movement, and the development of modern suburbia, generate powerful new insights that separate monographs on each of these topics could never produce. Marks' treatment of European and global popular reception of Russian thinkers and his analysis of how the interpretation and misinterpretation of their works contributed to the shaping of contemporary cultural history, stands out as an example of the originality and importance of his work.

What is perhaps most impressive about the book is the intellectual cohesion that informs the author's treatment of this wide range of topics. What emerges from his work is a picture of a Russia whose tremendous impact on global development during this past century was derived precisely from its own highly ambivalent response to the Western model of modernization. Both in rejecting the socio-cultural paradigm of modernity and in embracing it, Russia and the Soviet Union developed distinctive modes of expression and methods of political organization that became paradigmatic examples in their own right, both in the West and in the non-European world. This approach places the history of communism in a much broader frame of understanding and provides a vital analytical tool for an overarching analysis of contemporary cultural history. It constitutes one of those original insights that have the power to change the way we view the past. Moreover, it represents a significant contribution to the methodology of cultural history: Marks illuminates how the transmission and appropriation of ideas can cut across political and ideological boundaries, while at the same time exploring how the development of transnational cultural influences was shaped by particular political institutions, power differentials, and socio-economic conditions.

In brief, this book offers a compelling new perspective on Russia's role in shaping global culture and politics in the modern era. It is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern Russian history, the globalization of culture in the 20th century, and/or the relationship between economic and technological modernization and the upsurge of radical politics in the contemporary world.

Rating:
Summary: Straddling the Continents
Review: I purchased, "How Russia Shaped the Modern World" at the New York Public Library's stunning exhibit on "Russia Engages the World." The show covered Russia primarily in the 17th and 18th century so I thought I'd take a leap forward and read this book.

"Russia" covers a lot of ground including subjects ranging from anarchism to painting and shows the impact of Russian ideas on authors in the United States as well as dictators in Africa. Frequently, I found myself wanting more from a discussion about an artist or a movement but the purpose of the book is to chart influences and make connections not to detail specific movements and individuals. Russia is unique in that it brings together both European and Asian influences commingling the foreign with the familiar that is so intriguing to cultures around the world.

I found the book most compelling when it looked at Russian literature, dance and painting. There are several reasons for this. First, the arts are full of hope, originality, vision and joy. Second, the story of how Russian artists influenced the rest of the world is unfamiliar to me. Third, Russia's political influence has been largely harsh, destructive, sad and all too familiar to someone who lived through the cold war.

The prose style is more analytic than descriptive and incisive but not personal. I think it fits the subject matter but borders on the dry side. My biggest complaint is that the book could have been divided into two sections, one that focused on the Russian artistic contributions and the other on the political. The impact of each of those areas is different and would have benefited from separate but rigorous analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Straddling the Continents
Review: I purchased, "How Russia Shaped the Modern World" at the New York Public Library's stunning exhibit on "Russia Engages the World." The show covered Russia primarily in the 17th and 18th century so I thought I'd take a leap forward and read this book.

"Russia" covers a lot of ground including subjects ranging from anarchism to painting and shows the impact of Russian ideas on authors in the United States as well as dictators in Africa. Frequently, I found myself wanting more from a discussion about an artist or a movement but the purpose of the book is to chart influences and make connections not to detail specific movements and individuals. Russia is unique in that it brings together both European and Asian influences commingling the foreign with the familiar that is so intriguing to cultures around the world.

I found the book most compelling when it looked at Russian literature, dance and painting. There are several reasons for this. First, the arts are full of hope, originality, vision and joy. Second, the story of how Russian artists influenced the rest of the world is unfamiliar to me. Third, Russia's political influence has been largely harsh, destructive, sad and all too familiar to someone who lived through the cold war.

The prose style is more analytic than descriptive and incisive but not personal. I think it fits the subject matter but borders on the dry side. My biggest complaint is that the book could have been divided into two sections, one that focused on the Russian artistic contributions and the other on the political. The impact of each of those areas is different and would have benefited from separate but rigorous analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Read...Many Inaccuracies
Review: Marks makes a number of technical inaccuracies. If you want to see if you're interested in Russian culture but don't know much about it, get this book from the library. Personally, I was inspired to learn more about anarchy and anti-semitism from this book. You won't need it again, and you shouldn't cite this book as a source, because Marks is mostly using secondary sources, which you'll need to read yourself. The general ideas that you get from this book will probably be fine, but if you want to follow up on some of the ideas, find a book that's more focused on the area in which you're interested. Additionally, Marks makes a number of unsubstantiated generalizations that he doesn't back up; this would be fine if the book weren't meant for beginners, who won't understand where he's coming from.

Rating:
Summary: Russia: The old Myth that never ends...
Review: Professor Steven G. Marks' new book: "How Russia Shaped The Modern World" comes out at the time when Russia itself is deep into the sweeping transitions and uncertainties of the monumental post-Soviet collapse of the 1989-91.

Decoding specific Russian roots of various political and cultural movements transplanted elsewhere in the world, the book looks an appealing endeavor in trying to use a unifying approach in showing how this particular blend of Slavic philosophy, based on exaltation of human suffering and repudiation of satiety, went on shaking and reconstructing established human societal and creative conventions in Europe, Asia, Africa and, to a lesser extent, on both American continents.

Author deserves particular credit for elements of the book that deal with the Russian creative influence, still abound around the world today. Sergei Diaghilev in ballet, Leon Bakst in costume design, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold in theatre, Vasily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich in painting and visual art are all interwoven neatly and convincingly into the paradigmatic influences in their respective and inventive artistic expressions.

Overwhelming amount of reference material and specific reading that went into writing these chapters, which appear to require very little extra in order to turn them into a separate and valuable book on continuity and history in arts, speaks volumes about S. Marks' commendable meticulousness in dealing with people and their ideas.

Continuous relevance of Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anti-bourgeoisie anarchism and radicalism with his passion for destruction, his penchant for secrecy and his willingness to use brutal force to establish new egalitarian order, linked naturally through multitude of revolts, revolutions and "liberation" movements of the XX Century could hardly be denied in the present "(new) terrorism age".

One of Fedor Dostoevsky's brilliant and infectious social admonitions, telling us, that "one (dictator) could rule (despotically), but as long as he took care of the submissive people's most basic survival needs, (and) mankind will run after (him) like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient", expressed in Brothers Karamazov, persists in bordering on absolute, by the very lure such "economic certainty and psychological protection" brings, in return for our willingness to give up the burden of our personal freedom.

Steven Marks' particular allusion to this forewarning by Dostoevsky, although hidden deeply in the thick of his book, and the substance of this intuitive comment by the great Russian writer, has never been truer in our "liberating" times of neo-liberal governing agendas.

The book's topical chapters, dealing with such specific philosophical torrent as Tolstoy's "neprotivlenie zlu nasiliem" (non-resistance to evil by violence) and, separately, with domestic Russian/Soviet Communism and Dictatorship, including their "export" variations, found elsewhere in the world, are sprinkled with witty observations, and clever remarks, but, overall, are less enticing.
Probably because of the far-reaching nature of writings on philosophy of "peaceful" resistance, exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi or found in texts on the equality rights movement of the 1960s American blacks. And, in second case, because of even more exhaustive multitudes of the anti-Communist writings, that by now, easily form a separate branch of the Western Social Science.

Russia continues to defy conventions and many old and new questions are still waiting to be answered.

XXth Century had proven to be one of the most turbulent in the country's history as it went through two sweeping and devastating societal changes: first in violently replacing old Imperial and Czarist Russia with Socialist ideas and ideals, and forcibly uniting hundreds of the Russian and ethnic millions under its banner, and then, quietly expiring and disintegrating under the unsustainable economic and political burden of its own existence, just over 70 years later.

How could it happen that Russia, whose best intellectual minds felt closest in spirit to German philosophical currents, and drunk freely from Hegel, Marx and Engels, had fought two bloody wars with the Germany's military in a span of less then 30 years?

How, standing (secretly) ready to join the German-Italian fascists and the Japanese in the Axis triangle in 1940, Russia ended up on the victorious side of Western Allies and survived another four and a half decades of the cold war, while the seemingly more "viable" regimes ended in disaster of the 1945 defeat?

Finally, how is the USSR, which was labeled unequivocally and rightly to be a "totalitarian" state, has shown ability not only for the radical internal self-reformation, but more amazingly, the ability to annihilate peacefully in taking the volunteer path to extinction? Extinction that, to be sure, was catastrophic, but came to pass without gory destructions or civil war?

Many of these and other important questions are just as sure will perpetuate the nature of Russia's mythical influence in the world, as has always been the case, and insure our unrelenting continuing fascination with it in times to come, as this book ably affirms.

Rating:
Summary: Original and convincing
Review: Steven Marks has written a most original book. While historians almost invariably deal with western influences on Russia, he is the first to demonstrate that there was also a reverse process, especially from the late nineteenth century on. He traces these influences in the fields of politics (revolutionary terrorism and anarchism), psychology (Dostoevsky), religion (Tolstoyanism), destructive Judeophobia (The so-called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion") as well as modern ballet, theater, and design. The two concluding chapters deal with the influence of Communism on Fascism and National-Socialism. While these two chapters are somewhat weakened by the author's ambivalent attitude toward the concept of totalitarianism," they nevertheless provide useful evidence to validate it. In all, an impressive achievement.