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Russian state-building and the problems of geopolitics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Graeme Gill
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Abstract

A basic task of the state is to ensure the continuation and security of the community within which it is found. In an attempt to achieve this, state elites pursue long-term strategies. Such strategies involve not just questions of external security, but also the structuring of domestic society with an eye to faciliting the extraction and mobilisation of resources. The tsarist state sought to achieve this through a cooptive strategy which left some room for independent economic initiative. The soviet elite sought to encapsulate all actors into a single command stucture, thereby removing all scope for independent activity. Ultimately both strategies failed, and the post-Soviet leaders are faced with the problem of devising a more successful alternative.

La tche essentielle de l'tat est d'assurer la continuation et la scurit de la communaut. Pour atteindre ce but, les lites poursuivent des stratgies long terme, qui englobent non seulement des questions de scurit extricure, mais galement la structuration interne de la socit, en veillant faciliter l'expression et la mobilisation des ressources. L'tat tsariste prtendait y arriver travers une stratgie de cooptation qui laissait une certaine place l'initiative conomique individuelle. L'lite sovitique voulait enfermer tous les acteurs en une structure commande unique, enlevant ainsi toute place l'activit individuelle. Les deux stratgies ont chou et les leaders post-sovitiques se trouvent confrons au problme d'imaginer une alternative plus russie.

Die Hauptaufgabe eines Staates ist es, die Weiterentwicklung und die Sicherheit jenor Gemeinschaft zu garantieren, die ihn gegrndet hat. Um dies zu erreichen, verfolgen die Fhrungseliten langfristige Ziele. Ziele dieser Art beinhalten nicht nur Fragen der ueren Sicherheit, sondern auch die innere Gesellschafts-struktur, wobei der Herausbildung und Frderung neuer Krfte besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird. Der zaristische Staat versuchte dies durch Kooptation zu erreichen, die eine gewisse wirtschaftliche Eigeninitiative zulie. Die sowjetische Fhrung beabsichtigte alle Handelnden in eine einzige Befehlsstruktur einzubinden und verhinderte dadurch jegliche Eigeninitiative. Beide Methoden haben versagt. Heute suchen die Fhrungskreise der ehemaligen Sowjetunion nach einer besseren Alternative.

Type
Postcommunism : Negation of the Negation
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 77 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1996

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References

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(12) This is defined broadly as those in the leading command and administrative posts of the state.

(13) This will be supplemented by a foreign policy designed to deal with external danger, but this will not be analyzed in this paper.

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(35) Although between 1721 and 1762 merchants were empowered to purchase villages with a view to acquiring serfs for industrial and mining ventures.

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(38) For example, the administrative and judicial reforms of the early 1860s helped to create a suitable framework for industrial development.

(39) Gerschenkron, Backwardness, Gerschenkron, 19–20.

(40) See the figures cited in Falkus, p. 72. The sphere of largest foreign ownership was mining and metallurgy in which in 1915 some 63% of capital in joint stock companies was foreign. Foreign investment increased from 215 million roubles in 1890 to 911 million in 1900 to over two billion by 1914. Sontag, John P., Tsarist Debts and Tsarist Foreign Policy, Slavic Review 27, 4, December 1968, 530–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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(49) Kennedy, 149.

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(51) For a discussion of the nature of technological borrowing and its failure to stimulate sustained development, see Luke, 333–337.

(52) This is the essence of Skocpol's explanation.

(53) In the 1920s and 1930s these came together through the widespread fear within the political elite that the external enemy might combine with the internal class enemy and pose a challenge that could only be overcome through destroying the latter. This was a rationale for both agricultural collectivization and the Terror.

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