January 10, 2004
WHITE KNIGHT NIGHTS:
Putin’s might is White: The Russian President is a nationalist, not a communist, says Paul Robinson, and has much in common with the men who fought the Bolsheviks in the civil war (Paul Robinson, 1/10/04, The Spectator)
While Putin is indeed an autocrat, he is no Red Tsar. He is a typical Soviet radish — red on the outside but white at the core. He is the heir not of Lenin and Trotsky, but of the White officers who fought to save Russia from communism in the civil war of 1917 to 1921. Depending on one’s view of the Whites, that may or may not be a good thing. But, to most, White is undoubtedly better than Red, and Putin’s authoritarian rule gives Russia comparatively little to fear. [...]
There is something of a misconception in the West that the Russian state has traditionally been exceedingly powerful. In fact, the opposite is the case. Compared with Western countries, the rulers of pre-communist Russia had a very small administrative apparatus and comparatively limited financial resources to govern an enormous geographic area. Russian leaders have regularly found it extremely difficult to enforce their rule far from Moscow or St Petersburg. Even in the modern era both Yeltsin and Putin have found themselves frustrated by regional governors who pursue policies directly counter to those of the central government. In earlier times, it was a lack of power, not a surfeit, that induced tyrants such as Ivan the Terrible to resort to violent administrative solutions.A weak state can lead to despotism. It is only under the shelter of a state strong enough to protect its subjects from crime or external assault, to create and enforce laws to regulate commerce and industry, and to encourage the arts, education and other social benefits, that a society can prosper, and that the conditions for individual liberty can ever hope to exist.
This was certainly the view of the two Russian philosophers most closely associated with the White Russian armies, Petr Struve and Ivan Il’in. Struve began his intellectual career as a Marxist, but ended it as a monarchist. Equally remarkably, Il’in was first expelled from Soviet Russia to Germany for his anti-communist agitation, and then forced to flee from Germany for his refusal to support the Nazis.Both men understood that the intelligentsia’s obsession with liberating the people was unleashing forces which would eventually destroy all liberty in Russia. Only an authoritarian government, they decided, could protect individual freedoms in the absence of a political culture that accepted basic ideas such as property rights. A society whose people understood legal rights and duties could successfully govern itself. One that did not must be ruled by a powerful individual, who would educate the people in its legal consciousness until such time as it was fit for self-rule.
This sounds like a recipe for dictatorship, which indeed it was. But Il’in made a clear distinction between dictatorial rule and totalitarian rule. The latter was ‘godless’, and while the state should be all-powerful in those matters which fell under its competence, it should stay out of other areas, such as a person’s religious beliefs or private life, entirely.
What we see, therefore, in the ideology of the Whites is a form of authoritarian liberalism, which insists on the need for the rule of a single powerful individual, but does so because such an individual is seen, in Russia’s peculiar circumstances, as the personification of the state and hence as the best protector of liberty. One can, I maintain, view Putin in the same light.
The notion of tsardom as some kind of massively oppressive system was always just a function of apologists for the Bolsheviks (like the acquisitive Poles). Indeed, there's every reason to believe that Russia would have continued evolving towards liberal democracy if given the chance to develop naturally. But the damage done by 70+ years of Marxism means that a period of authoritarianism is probably required while law and order is re-established and non-governmental institutions are developed or refurbished. Mr. Putin gives indications that despite the level of control that is needed now it can be no more than a transitional step. If so, he's the best of a set of pretty bad options in Russia. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2004 7:57 PM
OJ: What does this mean:
"apologists for the Bolsheviks (like the acquisitive Poles)"
Was Romanoff absolutism the same as west european monarchies?
No. In Western Europe Monarchy co-evolved with a large number of instituions including parliments, law courts, the Church, Monasteries, Municipalities, the Nobility, Chivalry and on and on. The institutions, each jealous of its rights, trammeled the power of the King and protected the liberties of the people. Absolutism was a theory created by Enlightenment Philosophes to justify the Royal attack on the ancient institutions.
Russia was born well after the creative phase of the Middle Ages (11th -13th centuries), and it was not part of the Roman Church. The Eastern Church had always been more subordinate to the State than had the Roman Church. In Russia, the Romanoffs did not face the institutions of the west. Peter the Great could tell his boyars to cut off their beards and they did. The Russian Tsar was far more of an absolute ruler than any western king ever was, and the serfdom of the Russian pesants was far more debased, than that of west European pesants.
Was continuing Romanoff rule a possibility in the summer of 1917?
No. The Tsardom collapsed in the spring. But, that is not to say that Bolshevik rule was in any way inevitable. The Bolsheviks pulled off a coup d'etate in the autum and then hung for dear life through 5 years of civil war. They won only by being more ruthless and better organized than their opponents.
How long did the Bolsheviks rule?
About 15-20 years. Then Stalin killed them all after which the country was run by a Bureaucratic Facist Autocracy, which used nationalism to motivate its domestic subjects and Marxism to bedazle its european and American Accolytes. That regime colapsed in the late 1980's. Russia appears to be stumbling towards republican rule. Its not Switzerland yet, but the Swiss have a 700 year lead on the Russians.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 11, 2004 3:53 PMThe Eastern Church was a relatively weak
mediating institution compared to the Western
Church which was a dominant and then co-equal
branch of government for several hundred years.
While OJ is probably right that 20th Century Russia would have developed along liberal-democratic lines if WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution had not occurred, I don't think you can claim that the Tsars' were not the traditional enemies of freedom.
Just read almost anything by Richard Pipes, especially "Property and Freedom." He extensively documents how the Tsars destroyed Novgorod (the closest thing old Russia had to a Western state) and lacked any property law.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at January 12, 2004 11:30 AMUh, I do believe there were some pre-Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik critics of the Autokrator.
Orrin's opinion requires one to square a political circle: to evolve toward any form of open government, the Autokrat had to renounce his Autokracy. There was an experiment to see if it could be devolved, but the experiment failed.
The only option then was revolution. It could have taken any of several forms. In fact, the first revolution was pluralist. It proved unable to sustain itself against single-minded opposition.
Whether it could have resisted a White counterrevolution is doubtful. It had few friends.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 12, 2004 11:47 AMUh, I do believe there were some pre-Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik critics of the Autokrator.
Orrin's opinion requires one to square a political circle: to evolve toward any form of open government, the Autokrat had to renounce his Autokracy. There was an experiment to see if it could be devolved, but the experiment failed.
The only option then was revolution. It could have taken any of several forms. In fact, the first revolution was pluralist. It proved unable to sustain itself against single-minded opposition.
Whether it could have resisted a White counterrevolution is doubtful. It had few friends.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 12, 2004 11:47 AMShould we expect Russia to further shrink, as some of the more independent-minded provinces decide to break away ?
Posted by: THX 1138 at January 12, 2004 3:03 PMRussia will shrink even more when China decides it can make better use of the eastern 2/3 of Russia than the Russians can.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 13, 2004 12:15 AM