Monthly Archives: April 2013

Russia’s Future

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Professor Angela Stent’s lecture covered a myriad of facets of Russia-U.S. relations. What struck me most was her focus on the need for U.S. officials to better empathize with Russia, to better understand their unique position.

Many Russians see U.S. as Russia’s main adversary, a view that is only encouraged by state-run media. It is hardly surprising this would be the dominant view, given the humiliation Russia has experienced. Moving from a superpower to a severely weakened state with a dirty past and a dim future, it is natural that the people of Russia would support a leader who seemed capable of earning the respect Russia has sorely missed.  We see Russia as an extremely powerful, therefore dangerous, country. However, Russians feel acutely vulnerable. This sense of vulnerability can lead to bitterness, as they see the U.S. constantly undermining them, whether it is tightening the “noose” of NATO or criticizing Russia’s human rights abuses, while being soft on China.

She also mentioned the important divide between the middle class in Moscow and the working class in the provinces. When the protests erupted last year, it was commonly held view in the U.S. that these protests signaled that most Russians were against Putin. However, Moscow is not Russia, however it might seem to other nations. Putin is well supported outside of Moscow, both in the provinces and his home city of St. Petersburg. Although he clearly abuses his grip on power, it is not a sure thing that even if elections were completely honest, he would lose. That fact is not just indicative of Putin’s popularity but also of the lack of any viable opponents, a reality made sure by Kremlin policies.

After the lecture, I was left with several questions regarding the future of Russia, the most important question regarding the possible effects of oil prices. Putin’s popularity is heavily due to the economic success enjoyed under his watch. However, this economic success is mostly due to a reliance on the exportation of expensive oil. However, when oil prices fall (and it is a question of when, not if) I wonder what the effect will be on Russian politics. People are less likely to permit civil right abuses if the economy tanks, but Putin will likely turn to even more authoritarian techniques, to stay in power.

Russian Orthodoxy in the Soviet Union

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During my research regarding religion in the Soviet Union, and specifically Russian Orthodoxy, I have been gleaning incredible amounts of information that I previously had not known about the topic.

An aspect of Russian Orthodoxy that I had not been aware of was how divided clergymen within the Church actually were. My previous belief was that there were only two sides to the argument about religion within the Soviet state: the Communists in charge who opposed it, and the religious leaders who supported it. Much to my surprise, I found that at least on the side of church leaders, there were many factions within the faith that splintered the church and lessened its effectiveness as a defender of faith in the Soviet Union. For example,  Furthermore, I found that the Soviet government often used the multiple factions against each other. By turning the various groups on each other, the Soviet regime ensured that no one group would become too powerful to be an actual threat against the Soviet Union. They did this by showing favortism to one group or another, or offering certain benefits to groups that sided with the government instead of the rest of the church leaders.

I think the reason that I found this aspect to be particularly interesting was that I assumed that the Soviet leaders, in wanting to eradicate religion in their nation, turned solely to the more brutal methods of exile or even execution. While this was true in some cases, Soviet leaders realized how truly intrinsic church leaders were to Russian society, and that by eradicating them, they faced the wrath of the Russian people. Therefore, they used more subtle means of erasing religion from Russian life. Through the promotion of science over religion, anti-religious propoganda, the reeducation of youth, and even through the rebranding of church sanctioned holidays and ideas, the Soviet Union effectively succeeded in over time lessening the importance of religion within Soviet society.

Feminism

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Highly appropriately timed, since I am writing my essay on the double burden and it is our next discussion in class, is a NY Times article from the week about the Russian Orthodox patriarch condemning feminism.  He is quoted as saying it is dangerous for giving women an “illusion of freedom” when they should be focusing on their families and children.  As a 21st century woman, I find this notion extremely disturbing, but as a history scholar, I see this echoed throughout my research on the double burden.  In the early Stalinist period, women were discriminated against in the workforce because of this same patriarchal mindset, and even the women that wanted jobs were refused and told to go back to their husbands.  Of course I recognize that these ideas are commonly used by churches all over the world, but what I found even more off-putting was that the Patriarch works with the Russian president to ensure that the church is the guardian of Russia’s national values.  This official relationship between church and state is proving to be dangerous to women.

The Patriarch also claimed that the “pesudo-freedom” feminism encourages takes place outside the confines of marriage.  Here, I understand some of the historical significance of his claim.  Bolshevik officials after the revolution argued against marriage as a mutually exploitative economic endeavor and made divorce easier to obtain, which resulted in men leaving their wives easily and the women taking advantage of their alimony to live outside of marraige.  In the socialization of Russia, women were forced to work in the marginalized sectors of industry, which provided them with poor working conditions and little free time.  At the same time as working the night shift in a textile factory, for example, they had to get up early to take care of the children and feed their husband.  This resulted in what is called the “double burden,” which was responsible for high levels of work-related accidents among women and infertility, since the working conditions were chemically dangerous.  However, in an alternative twist on feminism, many women refused to leave these jobs because they provided the best wages and access to housing in order to support their families.  The government, especially after WWII, recognized this problem and sought measures to protect women within the work force, such as providing them maternity leave, but even though socialism required the equality of the sexes, women were pressured into assuming domestic and reproductive roles to help Russia rebuild.  The orthodox Patriarch is reminiscent of this stereotypically misogynistic and patriarchal past, putting all the pressure on women to preserve the homeland when the Soviet Union already proved that the assertion of traditional gender roles does nothing to contribute to modernization and results in the exploitation of the female population.

 

Negative Media Coverage

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As I was looking through various news stories regarding Russia, I noticed that almost all of them are about something negative such as military activity or potential threats against the United States. I think this goes back to a blog post I had the other week about the portrayal of Russians in American films. Ranging from economic protests to the Kremlin encroaching on new spheres of influence, the media coverage of Russia only seems to further push Russians away from the western countries.

I’m not saying that the Russians are not guilty of many if not all of these things; however, I think it is important to show both sides of a civilization, rather than just the politics that go against the United States. We see this problem not only with Russia but with the Middle East as well. Media coverage of the war on terror has led to a vast amount of negative press regarding Muslims and middle-easterners in general. This has in turn caused a very negative public opinion of these groups. The same thing happened during Soviet times and will continue as long as the people condone this kind of media.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russia/index.html

If you just look at the New York Times almost all of the stories featured are negative in some way or another. Because this is one of the biggest sources of news in the United States, many people are influenced by this, thus making the problem worse.

The Arts and the Cold War

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This post is going to veer pretty far from our course material (and jump ahead into the Cold War). Nonetheless, the Soviet Union has been popping up a fair amount in another course I’m taking this semester called Transnational America. It’s my first course in the American Studies department, and it examines how US culture has been formed by our interactions with foreign peoples at home and abroad. We’ve just done a series of readings about American attempts to win over citizens in countries in Africa and the Middle East from Soviet influence, and I’m realizing that some aspects of American culture can be seen as a reaction to the Soviet arts.

One example we read about was the use of jazz music as a tool for spreading American values and goodwill abroad. In the 1950’s, the US sponsored the first of a series of jazz tours in the Middle East and South Africa. Up until this point, jazz music was scorned and marginalized as an art form because it was practiced almost exclusively by African-Americans. US policy makers had no partiality towards jazz music, but they selected it simply because they knew it was unlike anything else the Soviet Union could offer. The US knew that they couldn’t compete with Russia when it came to the arts – they lagged far behind in theater, dance, and classical music. However, they also recognized that whereas Russian art forms such as ballet and classical music were beautiful in their rigidity, jazz encouraged freedom of expression – a value that could not be found under Soviet leadership.

The dichotomy between freedom of expression and adherence to state-issued rules can also be seen in the visual arts. In my Transnational America class, we looked at works of art by Jackson Pollock and compared them to the idea of Soviet socialist realism. Whereas the Pollack pieces were abstract and welcomed myriad different interpretations and analyses, the socialist realist paintings were, as we can all guess, realistic depictions of quotidian Soviet experiences. My knowledge of art history is limited, and anyone who is well versed in it would probably cringe at my claim that abstract American art is a reaction to soviet art, but I think it is safe to say that modern American art was a weapon in the fight against the Soviet union in the cold war. A New Yorker article I found while researching this topic puts it well: “[American modern art] was avant-garde, the product of an advanced civilization. In contrast to Soviet painting, it was neither representational nor didactic… Either way, Abstract Expressionism stood for autonomy: the autonomy of art, freed from its obligation to represent the world, or the freedom of the individual—just the principles that the United States was defending in the worldwide struggle.”

The examples I’ve presented barely scratch the surface of the lasting effects of US-Soviet interactions in the Cold War, and they’re definitely the most benign – our most recent reading in Transnational America examined how US strategies to defeat Russia in Afghanistan planted the seeds for 9/11.  As we move forward into the Cold War in our study of the history of Russia, I’ll be interested to learn more about how this period in history has shaped our world today.

New Yorker article for anyone interested:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/17/051017crat_atlarge

The Constant of Change in History

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Before taking this course, I can honestly say that I had a very naive, idealistic vision of how history played a role in society. In true American fashion, I believed that history was irrevocable, it couldn’t be altered and it was certain. I took comfort in knowing that regardless of what happens on a day to day basis, history remains the same. I’ve come to realize however, just how easily history can be changed, molded, or even forgotten over time. Despite this disconcerting realization that I’ve reached over this semester, I’ve realized that there is one constant with the study of history, and that is change. Studying the history of Russia, and in particular that of the Soviet Union has proven this time and time again. Its truly fascinating to see just how easily Soviet history is changed, adopted, and twisted to fit the needs of those in charge.

For example, when Stalin became the leader of the Soviet Union it was common knowledge within the inner circle that Lenin had not wanted Stalin to become the leader. As a result, Stalin sought to eliminate that aspect of history, and strove to create himself as the ultimate, all-knowing Father of Russia. He did this by getting rid of Lenin’s supporters, and by taking many of Lenin’s quotes out of context to show himself as Lenin’s chosen heir. By erasing people who knew the truth about Lenin’s opinions of Stalin, he was able to erase and twist history to suit his own needs.

This idea was also clearly epitomized on February 24, 1956, when Khrushchev delivered a “secret speech” to a closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party. In this speech, Khrushchev not only denounced Stalin for his transgressions, but also disassociated himself and the Communist Party from any of Stalin’s actions while leader of the Soviet Union. With one single speech, Khrushchev transformed Stalin from a national hero to the image of a tyrannical mass murderer. Similar to Stalin, Khrushchev also got rid of supporters of the old leader, though through the less violent means of deportation and demotion.

As much as Khrushchev strove to emphasize the differences between him and Stalin, it is clear that both had some similarities. One key aspect of their lives that was similar was how both manipulated history to suit their own needs. No matter how hard Khrushchev tried to distance himself from Stalin, there was no escaping this commonality. This idea is common not only in leaders throughout history, but also within every individual. We’re all guilty of changing memories we posess, and in turn, we alter history collectively.  The histories we know are not objectively correct, they’re simply the only ones we have. The Russian people were dictated their nation’s history by their leader, and it was the only one accepted and taught. The ability of history to be so easily changed with each passing leader only solidifies the susceptibility of history to change.

The New Economic Raisin Policy

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We have talked a lot about Lenin and Stalin’s agricultural policy in class this semester, so when I came across an article about how how the raisin market is controlled in the United States, I was immediately reminded of the NEP. Confoundingly, American raisin production is regulated by a government agency called the Raisin Administrative Committee, established by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, which a group of raisin farmers are currently challenging in the U.S. Supreme Court. The system works as follows:

The committee, run by 47 raisin farmers and packers, along with a sole member of the raisin-eating public, decides each year how many raisins the domestic market can bear, and thus how many it should siphon off to preserve an “orderly” market. It does not pay for the raisins it appropriates, and gives many of them away, while selling others for export. Once it has covered its own costs, it returns whatever profits remain to farmers. In some years there are none. Worse, farmers sometimes forfeit a substantial share of their crop: 47% in 2003 and 30% in 2004, for example.

As one would expect (especially from The Economist), the article makes references to the Soviet command economy, but gets the era wrong, calling it Brezhnevite, rather than what it is – Leninist. The NEP, such as this system, was a quasi-capitalist, and after meeting the state set quotas, farmers could sell what they grew. The Brezhnev era on the other hand was characterized by lines and rationing. As part of the raisin-eating public, I have never had a problem being able to buy raisins. The time period when this law was enacted is a cause of interest, as it was not long after the USSR itself had used this system. Similar market controls were common for other crops as well, but most have abandoned them already. I wonder if there was any modeling of U.S. agriculture policy during the great depression on Soviet policy following the Russian Civil War. I also wonder how this system survived the Cold War without being labeled as communist. Perhaps I should be paying more attention to how Soviet History connects to the food I eat.