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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Pre- revolutionary Russia was a rapidly advancing society in which a number of definite trends could be detected. Assuming that this development had not been interrupted by war and revolution, certain conjectures of the effects of these trends might be formulated.
We may assume that without the revolution the political forces of Russia would have achieved the transformation of the “dual” or “constitutional” monarchy, which ruled Russia since 1906, into a parliamentary monarchy in which the Crown would have yielded actual power to representatives of public opinion. The franchise of the Douma would have been gradually democratized. The establishment of Z.emstvos, that is, provincial and district self-government, which, between 1866 and 1914, had contributed so much to Russia's advance in the fields of public education and public hygiene, would have been extended throughout the Empire, with perhaps the exception of some semi-colonial territories; these agencies would have received a significant re-en-forcement through the modernization of obsolete institutions of peasant self-government. The excellent judicial system which Russia had already enjoyed since 1866, curbed during the reactionary period before the Russo-Japanese war, but partly restored under the Douma, would have been expanded and improved.
* Note. The effects of a revolution are often measured by comparing the state of a nation immediately before with its condition afterwards. This procedure is correct if the nation was stagnant before the revolution. It is used on the strength of the supposition that all revolutions take place in stagnant societies, whereas, most commonly; they break out in rapidly changing societies, [Sorokin, P. A., Social and Cultural Dynamics. (New York, 1937), vol. III, pp. 498–9Google Scholar] in regard to which this procedure is incorrect. To measure the effects of a revolution, post-revolutionary society must be compared with that hypothetical society which would have existed if the pre-revolutionary trends had not been interrupted. Such a society is obviously only conjectural, and its comparison with post-revolutionary actuality will yield results of only limited significance. But such ’mental experiment“ [This is one of the main methods used by Max Weber. Cf. also Maclver, R., Social Causation, (Boston, 1942), pp. 258–9]Google Scholar is unavoidable in any evaluation of historical events, and the conjectural statements reached in this way are still more signficant than statements imputing to the revolution all the achievements and evils by comparing the situation after a revolution with the conditions that existed before the event.
If the revolution is ’programmatic,“ that is, is conducted ’according to plan“ with the purpose of actualizing a blueprint drawn up by its promoters, then another comparison, that between the actual achievements of the revolution and the blueprint is also of interest. The purpose of this paper is to make these two comparisons in respect to the Communist revolution in Russia. That revolution is now twenty-five years old and has been judged more often than not on those bases of comparison which we consider valueless. [One of the worst cases is that of Williams, A. B., The Russians, (New York 1943Google Scholar).]
1 For evidence see Timasheff, N. S., “On the Russian Revolution,” Review of Politics, 1942, pp. 252–9Google Scholar. See also Vernadsky, G. V., The Russian Revolution (N. Y., 1931Google Scholar), and Gordon, M., Workers before and after Lenin, (N. Y., 1941), pp 64–71 345–6, 360Google Scholar.
2 On this law see Ignatieff, P. N., “Education,” in Malevski-Malevich, P.. Russia-USSR, A Handbook. (London, 1933), p. 654Google Scholar.
3 About the two phases of Russian nationalism see Nolde, B., L'ancien régime ef la révolution russe, (Paris 1928), pp. 94– 5Google Scholar.
4 Cf. Timasheff, N. S., “The Soviet Constitution,” Thought, 1941, 627 ffGoogle Scholar.
5 According to the census of 1939, there were in Russia 3 million individual (non-collectivized) peasants and 1.4 million non-cooperated artisans; in both cases, the members of the families are included.
6 Figures in the text below have been borrowed or derived from Sotsialisticheskoye Stroitelstvo, 1939 (a kind of statistical abstract of the USSR). Figures for 1940 have been reported in Fortune, July 1942.
7 This function may be carried out indirectly, through the production of goods later on exchanged for food on the world market.
8 After 1933, Soviet statistics concerns itself with the “biological” and not with the “real” harvest, i.e. with the quantity of gain which was ready to be reaped on the fields (the figures being necessarily estimates), and not with the quantity actually collected. A difference of 10% between the two figures is assumed to exist by authorities in the field, such as Professor S. N. Prokopovich. If 10% is deducted from the figure for 1938, no improvement is left.
9 See, for instance, SirCitrine, W., I Search for the Truth in the USSR, (London 1936Google Scholar).
10 Cf. Gordon, M., op. cit., and Hubbard, L. E.. Soviet Labor and Indastry (London 1942Google Scholar).
11 See Timasheff, N. S., “JF Population of Soviet Russia,” Rural Sociology, 1940, pp. 303 ffGoogle Scholar.
12 Probably, fewer efforts would have been displayed in combating adult illiteracy. See Timasheff, N. S., “Overcoming Illiteracy,” Russian Review, vol. II, No. 1, pp. 80 ffGoogle Scholar.
13 About the reversal of the trend in the Marxist theory of law see Timasheff, N. S., “The Crisis in the Marxian Theory of Law,” New York University Law Quarterly Review, 1939Google Scholar.
14 Which, according to Sorokin, determines the main phases of culture within the cultural “super-system.”
15 This phase of Communist culture is well discussed by , S. and Webb, B., The Truth about Soviet Russia, (London, 1942), pp. 71–6Google Scholar, under the heading “The Disease of Orthodoxy.” The authors wrongly assume that the regime “will gradually lift the bar to free discussion about rival conceptions of social or political and economic systems.”
16 See London, K., The Seven Soviet Arts, (London, 1937Google Scholar). The author likes the “help” the government gives to art and literature, but regrets that the rulers support poor and obsolete patterns.
17 See Timasheff, N. S., Religion in Soviet Russia, N. Y., 1942Google Scholar. For a few later developments see Timasheff, N. S., “Religion in Russia,” Christianity and Crisis, 03 22, 1943Google Scholar.
18 See Timaslieff, N. S., op. cit., supra, note 4, pp. 289–92Google Scholar.
19 Grinevetsky, V. I., Post-war Perspectives of Russian Industry (in Russian) (Kiev, 1919, 2d editionMoscow 1922Google Scholar).
20 See N. S. Timasheff, op. cil., supra, note 4.
21 See Timasheff, N. S., “Cultural Order in Liberal, Fascist and Communist Society,” American Catholic Sociological Review, 1942, pp. 63 ffGoogle Scholar.
22 See N. S. Timasheff. op. cil., supra, note 17. To religious-minded people, the preservation of an atheist government protecting Russia's independence has appeared to be a lesser evil than the dubious restoration of religion in its old glory by a government enslaving Russia.
23 Very probably, freedom of opinion and of religion would come first, in connection with the abandonment of any official philosophy; then the permission to peasants to choose their way of life (collective or individual farms, even of the Stolypin type) and the restoration of private initiative in petty trade and industry. Contra, A. R. Williams, op. cit., supra, note 1.