Types of historical development, or Russia’s morphology of "backwardness" (Part 1)

The core of the `third group' consisted of the triad of Germany, Japan and Russia, the last usually at the bottom of the list in terms of its socioeconomic and political indexes. In spite of many differences with regard to their conditions and history, these countries showed marked similarities of government policies and guiding ideologies. At their centre was an attempt to escape what would be called today `dependency' and `cumulation of disadvantages', by a powerful intervention of the state, aimed to assure rapid industrialization. In the words of Witte, `only those economically independent are able fully to exercise their political might ...China, India, Turkey, Persia and Latin America are politically feeble in direct proportion to their economic dependence on foreign industry'. Consequent on that experience, `in our times the political might of the great states called upon to play a role in history is based not only on the spirit of its people but in their economic system. ...The international rivalry would not wait'. This view assumes a powerful, autocratic and aggressive government effectively opposing external pressures while suppressing any `internal political obstacles', be it socialist agitation, demands of ethnic `minorities' or even reactionary impulses within the landed `ruling class'. The aim was to advance `by hook or by crook', modernizing the army, promoting capital accumulation, facilitating industrialization, relegating agriculture to a secondary place within the national economy [10. P. 215; 70. P. 133].

For three decades, the Russian government doggedly followed `the German path'. Bunge, Vishnegradskii, Witte, Kokovtsev -- a succession of finance ministers-professed policies of directed economic development and energetic government intervention, within which the all-out support for home industry was central. Government policies facilitated high profit margins for the industrialists, low wages, and the squeezing of peasant economy for the sake of urban capital formation. Yet, whatever the effort, the model or the pretence, Russia's advance was still no match for that of Germany. It was on the battlefield and in the confrontations of international politics and finance that the fact of the matter was first manifested. From a first-class world power in the first half of the XIXth century, the Russian state has deteriorated, by the turn of the century, into a second-class force. The Crimean War of 1854--1855 was followed by the diplomatic defeat by the `European powers' at the Berlin conference in 1878, the military defeat by Japan in 1904 and retreat before Austrian pressure in 1908. All these rebuffs signaled and contributed to this growing international weakness.

Simultaneously, the severity of the economic crisis at the turn of the century showed how shaky the economic growth of Russia was. Social and ethnic contradictions and revolutionary pressures added to the internal weakness. Given the build-up of political and economic crises and the increasingly doubtful ability of the tsardom to dominate the international and local scene and to mobilize resources, Witte's political design and the later prediction-by-extrapolation by Timasheff of a development able to make Russia into another Germany were anything but prudent. This is the point where the significance of the other horn of the dilemma of `either Germany or China' comes into its own. The China of the day was to the contemporaries a synonym of declining ancient glory, but mostly a chief example of a victim of foreign political and economic predators. `Vicious circles' of popular impoverishment, the population outrunning resources and a growing `compradore' stratum of the economic agents of Western companies were reported from there. The less the Russian similarity to Germany, the more realistic the comparisons to China as seen by the educated Russians of those times. Russia was the first country in which the syndrome of such conditions and problems appeared within the context of political independence of long standing, of a successful competition in the past with the more `modern' Western neighbors and a country possessing a numerous intellectual elite, trained in advanced European scholarship and deeply involved in social analysis and in radical political action. That is why Russia was also to become the first `developing society' to begin and recognize itself as such.

The new understanding manifested itself in political strategies and decisions rather than in academic treatises. While theory stumbled behind, the actual leaders of Russia recognized that the theory drawn from `classical' capitalism, even when superficially adjusted, was insufficient for the type of society Russia was and/or was becoming. The self-understanding and the corresponding state strategies of `classical capitalism' were first substantially amended in a `Bismarckian way', theorized by F. List and accepted by the `middle group' of capitalist developers. List challenged the fundamental assumption of the British political economy concerning mutual advantages of free trade [40]. He believed that a transitional period of `protectionism' must secure the `maturing' of the German industry before it would be able to compete `freely' with Great Britain. He defended state intervention in markets and finance, that is, the policies that came to be expressed eventually in the German Custom Union, a major step towards the country's unification under the leadership of Prussia. Russia's practicing economist increasingly adopted the perspective offered by List. Witte had List's book personally translated and ordered his officials and aids to study it. Yet, transferred to Russia, the Listian policies failed to produce German-like results. The consequent crisis, rebellion and the dismay that culminated during the 1905--1907 revolution, was reflected in a new parcel of strategies of social transformation. These are crucial to the understanding of the `developing societies' of today and, in turn, understandable only in the light of their experience.

It was in Russia that a `second amendment' of the initial theories of `classical' capitalism took shape, offering a theoretical expression and a testing ground for a new type of `revolution from above' -- the `Stolypin Reforms' of 1906--1914. Russia's revolutionary epoch was linked into, overlaid with and productive of major conceptual revolution. Its first message of originality was that the spontaneity that underlaid the British case of industrialization indeed could not work similarly for the newcomers. Only the fundamental restructuring of the whole social fabric could lay foundations for the Listlike policies and the Western-style industrialization to follow in a Russia-like society. A `revolution from above' had to remove obstacles before capitalism could succeed. Stolypin's `revolution from above' was rapidly followed by its fundamental alternative -- the first `revolution from below' typical of `developing societies' and effectively executed and theorized following the lessons of revolutionary experience of 1905-- 1907 enhanced in 1917--1921.

That is why it is not accidental that while numerous `Western' intellectual fashions come and go, the analytical tenets of Russian experience and scholarship of those times are remarkably fresh when issues of `economic growth' and of the underprivileged component of mankind in the `developing societies' are addressed, be it peasants, the `state apparatus' or the intelligentsia, classes, elites or revolutionary cadres, agrarian reform, capital accumulation or `hidden unemployment'. That is also why Witte and Lenin, as well as Stolypin and Stalin, so often sound as if they were directly addressing politicians and militants on different sides of the ideological barriers in `developing societies'. To a considerable degree, they exhausted the range of alternative strategies available up to now).

To recapitulate, specific characteristics of Russia as a `developing society' made it differ significantly in social structure from other catching-up members of the industrializing societies (i.e. the USA, Germany and Japan) and to parallel a different category of societal development. That is not what major Western historians of Russia usually assume: “quantitatively, the differences were formidable ...but ...the basic elements of a backward economy were on the whole the same in Russia of the 1890s as in Germany of the 1830s” [23. P. 18, 27]. The writings of von Laue carried the unilinear assumption still further by externalizing fully the sources of change. To him a `cultural slope' continued inside Russia the `gradient issuing from Western Europe'. What was taking place in Russia was a “vast revolution from without', that is, an `expansion of Europe' in which `there is no blending of old and new [i.e. `Western'] ...the old was being ruthlessly subverted” [66. P. 199, 438, 422].

Despite the dissimilarity of the sources quoted, the authorities and the terminology used, Soviet scholars faced similar dilemmas and conducted similar debates. The arguments about foreign capital and its impact, the actual extent of Russian economic advance before the revolution, the `feudal remnants' in it, etc., were used as a vehicle for it. A major field in which the issue was explicated was that of agrarian history, which explains its significance for the general debate and in academic confrontations of past, present and, doubtlessly, future. Nobody has as yet used directly a `developing societies' model for an alternative explanation challenging the unilinear view, but the accentuation of specificity of the social transformation in the Russian countryside, of `semi-feudalism' and of the peculiarities of `the imperialist epoch' have often carried a similar message. Lenin's favorite abuse of aziatchina (Asianness), when talking of Russia, was never properly explored for insight, but used time and time again in the Soviet debate to stress the specificity of Russian capitalism, its `semi', not-quite-capitalist and not-quite- Western nature. Fundamental differences and arguments were often hidden behind quantitative designation, that is, capitalism was very strongly `semi' to some, less `semi' to others and not `semi' at all to those whom already Marx called `the Russian admirers of the capitalist system' (i.e. Russia's consistent evolutionists) [58. P. 100].

The shadow of the fundamental debate between Soviet historians entered also via the consideration of what the `imperialist epoch of capitalism' meant where Russia was concerned. The 1968 multi-volume of USSR history and attempts to explore new frontiers offered a middle position. It began by proclaiming as the new general insight of scholarship at the turn of the century `deviations in the development of capitalism ...from the usual norms of the capitalism of free competition' [31. P. 8]. That insight was said to be crystallized and advanced by Lenin's new theory of imperialism `as the last stage of capitalism' and `military feudal imperialism' represented by the tsarist state. This social formation was said to be ruled by a corresponding class coalition -- the political alliance between the squires and the top layer of imperialist bourgeoisie which was constructed in the weak post-1906 parliament -- the Duma. A tendency of financial capital to conserve rather than destroy the `early capitalist modes of production', and the repressive nature of the tsarist policies at the ethnic peripheries, were also pointed out. The nature of the 1905--1907 revolution was defined as a treble conflict and dynamic: proletarian, peasant and ethnic. The model caught well the complexity of the Russian social and political confrontations, but failed to account for some major characteristics representing a new road, a typical/specific pattern of societal transformation. It also bypassed some political forces of major significance.

Conclusions

The difficulties of the general problems reviewed are clearly not of the type that can be resolved by simply piling up data, archival documents or figures. The significance and necessity of close scrutiny of evidence is not in question, but it is rather the conceptualization of it that is opaque. When scholars stumble over words or hide behind them, the way forward, however tiresome, is to proceed with dissecting terms for their analytical meaning.

shanin economic historical intellectual

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