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The Fate of Capitalism in Russia: the Narodnik Version

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Theodore H. Von Laue
Theodore H. Von Laue*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges
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Extract

It is not Commonly Realized in Western society, where industries have grown by gradual stages, how painful and even subversive an influence industrialization has been in Russia (and other agricultural societies on the fringes of Europe or in the non-European world). When at the end of the nineteenth century Russian industries multiplied and brought in their train innumerable features of Western European urban-industrial life, they appeared to many Russians as a source of social, economic, and even political revolution. No wonder then that industrialization called forth vehement disputes among those concerned over the future of Russia. Such agitation reached a peak in the polemics between Narodniks and Marxists over the fate of capitalism in Russia, at a time when Russia experienced her first great spurt of industrial construction, from 1894–1899. This public debate—it was truly a “great debate,” touching the fundamentals of a people's creed—resembled, and indeed continued in modern terms, the controversy between the Slavophiles and Westernizers two generations earlier. But “while in their time the polemics between the Slavophiles and Westernizers were carried on between the four walls of a few salons in the midst of a select circle of advanced thinkers, the quarrel between the Narodniks and Marxists in the nineties gripped broad social groups and at one time, it can be said, absorbed almost completely the intellectual interests of the Russian people.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 11 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1954

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References

1 This article, the author gratefully acknowledges, represents part of a research project undertaken under a Senior Fellowship of the Russian Institute, Columbia University.

2 Kizevetter, A. A., Na rubeže dvukh stoletij: Vospominanija 1881–1914 (Prague, 1929), p. 212.Google Scholar

3 One need not be concerned (at least not in the context of this article) over the fact that the participants in this debate employed the term “capitalism” rather than “industrialization.” They did so because to their minds the rise of industries was part and parcel of a larger social, economic, and even political system which they called “capitalist.” But there can be little question that they understood by that term what they saw happening under their eyes: the economic transformation of Russia after the Emancipation, and particularly under the “Witte System,” to wit: the extension of the railway network, the development of heavy industries, the growth of subsidiary industries, the rise of an industrial proletariat, the influx of foreign capital, the new power of native and foreign bankers, the expansion of towns and cities, and, last but not least, the transformation of Russian agriculture under the impact of a money economy which, in turn, was tied to the world market. To be sure, nuances in the use of the term “capitalist” crept into the debate. Yet the main fact which supplied the fuel for the heated arguments was nothing less than the importation of the most salient features of contemporary development in the West: the expansion of industries and the metamorphosis of Russian society which it entailed.

There was, it seems, sound reason behind the use of the term “capitalism” as a unifying concept for all the interrelated phenomena of industrialization. Industrialization as a process of building up national industries, and of changing population from agricultural and rural occupations to urban-industrial ones, was inseparably linked with the given social, economic, and political framework. Until the “socialist industrialization” of Stalin's day there existed only one basic form of industrialization, i.e., “capitalist” industrialization, drawn from the patterns of Western Europe, whence it was exported to other parts of the world.

Whether, of course, Russian “capitalism,” as defined by the participants in this debate, was like Western “capitalism,” or whether the Government's conscious policy of industrialization (at least under Witte) modified it in some essential respects, cannot be considered here.

4 The illegal phases of this debate, not accessible to the Russian public as a whole, will here be omitted.

5 Nikolaj-on, , Očerki našego poreformennago obščestvennago khozjajstva (St. Petersburg, 1893)Google Scholar.

6 Sud'by kapitalizma v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1882).

7 These works include Naši napravlenija (St. Petersburg, 1893); Očerki teoretičeskoj èkonomii (St. Petersburg, 1895); and a collection of articles, Ot semidesjatykh godov k devjatisotykh: Sbornik statej (St. Petersburg, 1907).

8 His views were stated in Sociologičeskie ètjudy (2 vols., 2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1896), and in a series of articles in the magazine Russkoe bogatstvo in the 1890's.

9 The Russian translation of the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1872 with the permission of the censor, although it was later withdrawn from all public libraries and reading rooms. The second volume, published in 1885, was sold freely as a work of scientific analysis until 1894, when in view of the revived revolutionary agitation it was also recalled from public circulation. In 1896 the third volume was published, after considerable hesitation by the censors, as a scientific work with all the privileges thereof. (See the article on “Cenzura” in the Bol'šaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija, 1st ed., Vol LX.) Needless to say, all the less voluminous writings of Marx were prohibited. But even so, the bases of Marxism were public knowledge. In the seventies they had been openly discussed by Mikhailovskij, who defended the Narodnik views against the ideological intruder.

10 Ljadov, M., “Zarošdenie legal'nago i revoljucionnogo Marksizma v Rossii,” Front nauki i tekhniki (February, 1933), pp. 107 ffGoogle Scholar.

11 Černov, V., Zapiski socialista revoljutsionera (Berlin, 1922), p. 274.Google Scholar

12 See his series of articles “Karl Marks v russkoj literature” in the Vestnik Evropy, September to November, 1897.

13 The distinction is Ivanov-Razumnik's. See his Istorija russkoj obščestvennoj mysli (St. Petersburg, 1907), Vol. II, Chapter v.

14 Sud'by kapitalizma v Rossii, p. 12.

15 Ibid., p. 272.

16 Naši napravlenija, p. 65.

17 Toynbee Hall in the Whitechapel district of London, founded in 1884 by Canon Barnett as a meeting ground between university men and industrial workers.

It may be observed parenthetically that in Voroncov, the Westernizer acutely aware of the backwardness of the Russian peasant and the Slavophile who worshipped the genius of the narod held each other in an uneasy balance. Quite unconsciously he frequently tipped the scales from one to the other, praising the peasants or deploring their ignorance, showing an instability of basic orientation indicative of the transition through which Russia was passing. The dominant thought, however, was that the leadership lay with the intelligentsia until the narod could think and speak for itself.

18 In an article “Proizvoditel'nye klassy i intelligencija v Rossii” in Ot semidesiatykh godov…, p. 184.

19 Naši napravlenija, p. 160.

20 The argument is taken from Nikolaj-on, Očerki….

21 Sud'by kapitalizma, p. 140.

22 Voroncov, Očerki teoretičeskoj èkonomii, p. 113.

23 Voroncov, Sud'by kapitalizma, p. 44.

24 Ibid., p. 63.

25 What Voroncov thought of Witte may be gathered from à later book, in which he called him an upstart and adventurer who had no sense of responsibility towards the country. See Sud'ba kapitalističeskoj Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1907), p. 103.

26 They called for easy credit for peasants and kustars, the regulation of domestic grain prices, of internal migration, and for the establishment of public grain storage facilities. They also demanded more education for the peasants, legal equality for them under the civil code; and the suppression of corporal punishment.

27 Voroncov, Sud'by kapitalizma, p. 277.

28 In that famous letter Marx had agreed that under certain conditions, such as the continued vitality of the mir and, still more important, an accomplished revolution in the West, Russia could jump from her present primitive stage to the most advanced stage of socialism, omitting the capitalist phase altogether.

In 1893 Daniel'son incidentally found himself in an untenable halfway position between narodntčestvo and orthodox Marxism. This appeared most strikingly in an article published in Russkoe bogatstvo, April to June, 1894, in which he defended his views in his customary Marxist concepts without mentioning Marx's name, but vigorously attacking his Russian disciples.

29 Schulze-Gävernitz, G., Volkswirtschaftliche Studien aus Russland (Leipzig, 1899), p. 214 Google Scholar.

30 It is most succinctly stated in an article by Južcakov, “Voprosy èkonomicěskoj razvitija v Rossii,” Russkoe bogatsvo, November, 1893. It is clear from this article how closely the Narodniks identified capitalism with industrial development.

31 Ibid., p. 226.

32 See for instance his survey of 1894, in the January, 1895, issue of Russkoe bogatsvo.

33 Sociologičeskie ètjudy, II, 340.

34 Ibid.

35 It is interesting to note that Južakov did not apply the term imperialism to the world-wide expansion of capitalism which he traced. That term, together with the German equivalent Weltpolitik, entered his vocabulary only in 1900 when he reported the Boer War and the events in the Far East. But there can be no doubt that he had exactly in mind what was later considered the gist of that term. Lenin pursued Južakov's line of inquiry from the Marxist point of view only after 1902. See Stanley W. Page, “Lenin, Prophet of World Revolution from the East,” The Russian Review, April, 1952.

36 For a recent Bolshevik evaluation of the doctrinaire Narodniks (as of the controversy over the fate of capitalism in Russia), see for instance Liashchenko, , History of the National Economy of Russia (New York, 1949), pp. 427 ffGoogle Scholar.

Western thought, however, has been more inclined toward the Narodnik side, to judge by recent discussions of the industrialization of backward countries.

37 See Mitrany, D., Marx against the Peasant (Chapel Hill, 1951)Google Scholar, and Roberts, Henry, Rumania (New Haven, 1952)Google Scholar.

38 The almost mystical confidence in the mužik, so incomprehensible to many Western observers and so contrary to the Marxist contempt of the “idiocy of the country side,” was a natural result of this ethical orientation. It can be simply explained as a very human result of fruitful work between intellectuals and peasants; Bernard Pares, according to My Russian Memoirs, experienced it; Americans working on peasant projects in India voice it at present. It is a fact that once freed from the hopeless stalemate of landlord and bureaucrat tutelage, from traditional inertia, ignorance, and disease, and given a glimpse of a better life, simple peasants have impressed outsiders by their resourcefulness, adaptability, and good sense. As Chekhov's short stories show, the conditions of Russian life often strangled that basic Narodnik inspiration in the hopeless frustration of provincial routine. Yet it was embodied as an article of faith in the Narodnik creed, a reservoir of confidence with which to view the admitted backwardness of Russia with more assurance than would otherwise have been possible (for the unlimited faith in the possibilities of Russia as a capitalist and industrialized nation, found among the Russian followers of List and Marx with all their human callousness, was of course rejected by the Narodniks). See also the discussion of this point in Mitrany, p. 40.

39 Intentionally staying close to the prevailing state of mind and feeling among their compatriots, these writers reflected a deep-seated emotional resistance to the high degree of specialization and division of labor in modern urban industrial society. Such specialization and adaptation to mechanical aids aroused in them, who were themselves only versatile litterateurs, a fear of degeneration. Their ideal, stated in different forms by Tolstoy and Mikhailovskij (as by Thoreau in the United States), was the self-sufficient life with its incentives for the many-sided development of human personality. All human progress, according to Mikhailovskij, consisted in increasing the versatility of man; specialization meant always atrophy of some faculties and some organs. Capitalist society, based on the ever-multiplying division of functions, would therefore only cripple personality. The Narodniks spoke out sharply against the inhuman complexity of modern urban industrial society, representing a mood and a trend of thought which has by no means disappeared even from the current mart of ideas in the West.

40 The question of the tempo of industrial development did not enter into the controversy over the Fate of Capitalism in Russia. Yet it was debated in Witte's Budget Report for 1897. Witte's opponents, arguing for a slow tempo, usually employed Narodnik arguments. See Von Laue, T. H., “The High Cost and the Gamble of the Witte System,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. XIII, No. 4 (Fall, 1953)Google Scholar.