Please click here for this Alex Bayer’s article in the Globalist. In many respects it presents a standard American survey of Tsarist under-achievement followed by Communist misrule. Typically, for example, he states “Russia’s political economy has not moved forward much over the past 100 years. Despite mind-boggling mistakes, mismanagement and crimes of its leaders, Russia even now has much unrealized potential.”
It certainly hits on key synoptic themes of our course – such as the desire for economic modernisation and the use of repression. In truth I think it is readable, but I am not sure that I agree with it all. You might like to read and note its main conclusions now – at the start of our course – and then review it when we have completed our studies.
Mr Kydd.
You can tell this is written by an American! This article, to me, seems to pose several mistakes.
(1) Although there was a ‘Great Spurt’ under Alexander III and Nicholas II, leading to substantial industrisation, urbanisation and cultural and scientific output, it is easy to overstress the success. The economy contracted actually in the 1890s with a global depression, largely due to the overdependence of foreign capital and exports. What is more, Stalin was to overtake Vyshnegradskii’s and Witte’s achievement with the Five Year Plans and collectivisation. It was still militarily weak, losing the 1905 Russo-Japanese War and repression was still very strong, for instance Russification and Bloody Sunday. Tsarist Russia was not a society about to become a fully liberal and modern state.
(2) It ignores much of the success the Bolsheviks had. There is no mention of Lenin, his NEP that greatly helped agriculture and the lightening of repression. Nor does it mention Khrushnhev, who began a process of de-Stalinisation, the development of light industry, the more humane KGB, etc.
(3) This is a comment not on Russian history, but American. It is nonsense to say that the American state nurtured its society in the 20th century- the bloody place still lacks a welfare state.
Otherwise, a fantastic article that I agreed with entirely.
It’s fascinating to see how close Russia was to becoming such a huge super power before the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. The article seems to skip over the fact that illiteracy was at 70% and that this was mainly peasants, there is clearly still a serious issue of peasantry despite the emancipation of 1861, I think that Bayer fails to highlight this fact which puts a less reliable tint on the whole article.
However I never knew that the Russian Emancipation came before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in America, it would certainly seem that perhaps Alexander was acting out of morality and intelligence as oppose to fear.
The achievements of Romanov Russia are over-exaggerated, with comparisons to modern China, which seem absurd. There is moments of success such as ‘Witte’s Great Spurt’ but it was really limited in a time of Tsarist autocracy. The article seems hellbent on sugarcoating Romanov Russia and slagging off the Bolsheviks, without considering the success of Stalin’s industrialization or Lenin’s new economic policy. The article states how Russia still suffers now because of the Soviet era but fails to mention the state that Nicolas II left Russia in when he abdicated in 1917.
His name is Alexei Bayer and he is very much Russia.
I found the article intresting, mostly because it looks at the positives of Tsarist Russia. however in doing this is fails to look at the negatives. Emancipating serfdom sounds good but the reality was actualy worse. however the article does show how Russia was moving forward perhaps ahead of their times in their ideas, even if theese ideas didnt pan out so well.
I have to agree with Nick in that this article is very tainted by the writer’s American perspective and with Josh that a comparison with china seems quite strange and not necessarily fitting. It’s interesting that once again the significance of Russia’s size and the quest for industrialisation is made evident. I do agree with some of the main points made, however I think Bayer is a little vague when exploring pre-revolutionary Russia and then becomes too caught up in the mistakes of the soviets.
It is perhaps too simplistic to blame Russia’s mistakes and missed opportunities on the policies of the Soviet union, although of course the impact of the Soviet regime – the legacy it left behind – is undeniably a big part of this. But Bayer didn’t fully acknowledge that Tsarist Russia was far from perfect and Russia did not transition to Bolshevik and then Stalinist rule without maintaining some of the preexisting flaws that had held it back for decades, not just entirely new problems that were the fault of the Soviets
Plot twist: the writer isn’t in fact ‘American’ (with a name like Alexei)
Although you’d never have guessed his nationality from the article
It’s interesting to see the positives of Tsraist Russia, and i never knew that they were that close to becoming a world super power. However the article does seem to skim over the poorer parts of the Tsarist rule, it mentions the emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, however it appears to be trying to show that this was a good thing for Russia, when in fact living standards went down for most Russian peasants after emancipation.
I agree with some of the main points made, but I found that Bayer did not necessarily ‘weigh up’ both sides of his own argument. It seems to me that he very much starts with a positive view of Russia and then changes to a more negative view on an entirely different point, and not really reaching a middle ground or providing any evaluation.
I agree with Holy and Josh that the comparison to China does not work very well.
I think you can tell the author is Russian as although he talks of how Russia seemed backward compared to the rest of the modern world at the beginning of the article, I find that the achievements made by Russia he lists have been exaggerated. As he mentions how Russia was modernising and ahead by emancipating the serfs before Lincoln in America, but fails to mention the downside to this and how some would argue elements of life for the peasants in Russia was worse after emancipation.