In Stalin’s reply to Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, he gives the common people agency by stating that they have opinions and the ability to stand up for themselves.  I find it interesting that in this speech he speaks of pride in the common man’s power in accordance to socialist ideology, but this type of person is not the one responsible for victory in WWII because Stalin is no longer the common man.  By elevating himself to the godlike figure of state religion and separating from the reality of labor, Stalin had no ties to the people from which he rose except to say that he is speaking in their interest.  His other 1946 speech shows his continual manipulation of the system, not blaming the inexperience of Soviet diplomacy for starting the war, the “statesmen’s blunders”, but instead placing the fault on the rise of capitalism.  I think that he realized that since he had risen from the common people, he could just as easily be overthrown by a figure like himself, so he has to continually deflect the blame for incidences in which he really played a large role.  This, however, also contradicts with the statement I mentioned earlier, in which he gives the people agency to decide what is best.

I also think it is interesting that Stalin mentions that one positive aspect of the war was that it allowed the Soviets to examine their system, but, of course, upon examination he find the Soviet Union to be perfectly structured, needing only to rebuild what had already existed.  He credited the success of the Soviets to its organization as a “people’s social system,” but in the same way as the capitalist countries sent men to fight, Stalin worked his people into the ground to prepare for war and then sent them to die.  His support for the common man seemed only nominal since his rise to power.

Something that I have been musing on since our discussion of Stalin’s cult of personality last week is the difference between power and authority and how these concepts were manifested in the beginnings of the Soviet Union.

I would define power as en essence that is projected outwards, implying a control given over the people that often results in their fear.  Authority is an essence more given from the outside, as in a ruler’s influence and their people’s subsequent respect.  After talking about the cult of personality, it became clear to me that Stalin was a manifestation of the latter idea, the essence of power, than that of authority.  The fact that he had to rely on propaganda to grant him legitimacy as the father of the nation is evidence of this.  His creation of an image that is all-knowing and infallible, and his reliance on the threat of the gulag and secret police to inspire correct action all stem from a need to control and manipulate the people through fear instead of aiming to gain their respect.  He never gives the people an opportunity to question him or rethink their loyalty to him, and he would punish them if they did.  It is this fear that kept him in control.

At the same time that Stalin was being feared by Russia, he also established a balance between power and authority in dealing with the national groups.  He “directed” them back to their old nationalities without providing much choice, but then Stalin allowed for those groups to maintain their traditions until they joined the Soviet Union.  This probably gave him authority among those people, since he was not imposing the Soviet ideal on them from the start, however he never would have held as much authority as the local rulers he set up to enforce the Soviet ideology.

The thing about ruling through power instead of authority is that it is short-lived and unstable.  Just as was the reasoning behind the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in the first place, people will only live so long under oppression and fear.  Despite Stalin’s claim to be liberating the worker, he was just intimidating them into another hierarchal scheme, like his predecessors the Tsars, that would ultimately begin to be questioned and undermined.  I do not think he ever established and garnered true respect from the Soviet people in practice, though ideology would disagree.

The New York Times online ran an article on Thursday about the opening of the Moscow Stock Exchange, calling it “another milestone in the country’s capitalist evolution.”  I found it interesting, considering we have just begun discussing the plan for the Soviet economy, that twenty years after it ended, Russia deferred back to capitalism almost by default.  This transition does not seem to be easy-going, however, as the article described the Russian markets as the most “volatile,” either being in the top five or bottom five performing markets in the world.

While the article contained mostly economic jargon that I am not able to understand yet, what I did gleam from it was that this new stock exchange is considered a maturation, which at least to me implied that the Soviet program was in a sense immature and ill-conceived.  The return to capitalism can be likened to Lenin’s New Economic Policy’s reluctance to give up capitalism.  Despite being seen as violating socialist ideology, the Russian economy of the late 1920s was increasing because capitalism was partly responsible for encouraging production.  It left me wondering, coming from my capitalist background in America, which economic structure really makes the most sense.  While socialism’s ideas of equality sound wonderful from the outside, it is difficult to adjust to having one place in the economy and society without hope for advancement.  The competition of capitalism spurs the desire for betterment.  At times in our class it seemed the Soviet’s liked to punish sons for the sins of their fathers, as in Stalin’s singular promotion of those with working class backgrounds and hatred to the Tsarists.  The men of Russia in the the Soviet beginnings were far removed from the days of serfdom and probably the new middle class did not need to be punished for rising above these backgrounds.  This too contradicts the socialist ideology in that it promotes a hierarchy, even if peasants make up the top sphere.  If the leaders of the revolution themselves saw the benefits in capitalist ideals, is it the better system?  Is socialism designed to be a short term fix to get rid of wide-spread oppression but not meant to sustain in the long run?  While I am sure Marx, Lenin, and Stalin are rolling over in their graves at this post, the fact that Russia is finding its way back to capitalism seems to indicate that in order for Russia to once again become an imposing world power, it needs to end its years of teenage rebellion and finally settle into a stability, innovating in order to be able to compete with the other world markets.

I saw a little blurb on the NYTimes.com website on Friday about a former Soviet intelligence officer recently jailed for organizing a coup of ultra-nationalists against the Russian government and assassination plot against the architect of the market reforms in 2010.  I thought it was interesting that Russia maintained this tradition of revolution, especially those stemming from a small group like the Blosheviks, even in the present day.

I researched a little about Russian nationalism in the modern world to find that it contains a resurgence of the “Russia for Russians” movement that aims to reverse some of the equality granted to citizens under the Soviet program.  Despite its super negative connotations, I was surprised at my ability to draw a parallel to a similar anti-immigration movement taking place in the United States in the wake of the financial crisis.  Without the insurance of a socialist program in Russia, some people are just as concerned as Americans about the threat immigrants pose to the already suffering domestic job market.

It is especially understandable for this to be the case in Russia, where the Soviet government forced a change and reorganization of national identities on its people.  The re-emergence of the nationalist party is possible an attempt to preserve the glory of Russia as its long-ago status of empire, but it is frowned upon with the same disdain that any attempt to convey national pride in England is, for example.  The fear of holding one’s country as supreme after the fall of imperial policy makes national pride for the larger power moderate and makes the national pride of the “victims” heightened.  Having grown up in America and having spent my fall semester in England, I was surprised to find that so many parallels could be drawn between these two western European countries and a “fallen” eastern empire that is always portrayed as the antithesis of the western ideals.

Here is the article:

I began reading the Riasanovsky textbook this week about the conditions in Russia leading up to the Revolution of 1905.  Some things immediately jumped out at me in the section describing Nicholas II ad his nature as a ruler.  On page 390, he is described as having admirable personal qualities such as modesty and self-discipline.  However, the author then states that his qualities failed him in situations requiring strength and adaptability.  This reminded me of a discussion in my Islamic Empires class from last week.  In it, we discussed an article by Jane Burbank & Frederick Cooper in their book “Empires in World History.”  They describe the ideal empire to be one that retains the diversity of its people in order to profit from the skills of distinct communities, that has to be flexible in all situations, and that avoids ascribing to a centralized ideology because it leads to rival claims of authority and revolts.

I immediately drew a parallel between the Nicholas II section and this article.  Compared to the ideas of Burbank & Cooper, it seems Nicholas II failed at maintaing his empire and that the revolt of 1905 was inevitable.  I think the key problem of his reign as Tsar was his inability to adapt.  Raisanovsky states that his “traditionalist political blinders” made him unable to conform to new situations, by which I mean the removal of serfdom, the rise of the middle class, and Russia’s military and economic decline (p390).  He believed in the unrestricted power of the tsar based on an orthodox ideology to which he expected all citizens to conform.  Nicholas seems to have ignored it when this ideology no longer served the changing socio-political structure of Russia that called for reform through a national assembly.  His belief in social hierarchy no longer served the rising middle class that was torn between legal status as peasants and physically possessing more wealth than the fallen elite.  Diversity could no longer be maintained within the empire because there was a gradually closing gap between the upper and lower classes.

It is interesting to see a practical example of an empire in which retaining diversity had actually served it well.  I did not believe in the validity of the claim that making clear distinctions between peoples actually ensured peace, but before 1861 Russia, as witnessed through the eyes of Firs in the Cherry Orchard, diversity is what kept operations running because the peasants did not question their place in the hierarchy.  With a Tsar stuck in the ideology of this previous time and unwilling to adapt to the current state of the empire, an “ineffective relic of the past,”, the building of a revolution was inevitable (p392).