The autocracy
RONALD HINGLEY
For some fifty years Russian historians wishing to produce a serious general history of their country on native soil have been thwarted by the existence of compulsory official myths. And the Russian nineteenth century as a whole is worse catered for by native historians than are earlier epochs because it does not fall, or only partly falls, within the scope of the clas- sical Russian general historians: Karamzin, Solovyov, Klyuchevsky and Platonov.
Foreign or émigré historians have therefore had to step into the breach, and there exists a fairly large stock of useful studies of the Russian nineteenth century in English, German, etc.—uSually as part of a longer work (those of Charques, Riasanovsky, Rimscha, Stoic' and so on). It is when we begin to look for more solid fare that a comparative famine is to be observed, so that the best general history of nineteenth century Russia (among those run- ning to several hundred thousand words) has so far been that contained in Volume H of Russia by the émigré Russian historian Michael Florinsky. (Kornilov's study, though useful, has been somewhat overrated.) It is against Florinsky, therefore, that Pro- fessor Seton-Watson's 800 page study of the Russian Empire must be measured, and it may be said at once that the new work is well quali- fied to prevail over the old. But in one minor particular Seton-Watson seems, surprisingly, to come off worse: in English style. Not that there is anything objectionable about his manner of expressing himself, but it so happens that Florinsky was a master craftsman in Eng- lish prose. Heaven knows how he managed the feat (surely unique for a Russian, and beyond even a Nabokov) of describing the inhabitants of the Russian Empire in the manner of Nor- man Douglas discussing the denizens of Nepenthe, but the fact is that he did so: a re- markable literary achievement, though not an unmixed blessing from a historiographical point of view.
The ironical cadences of a Florinsky are not outside Seton-Watson's range; but he has chosen to cultivate a less inflected approach, having also decided to avoid 'giving good and bad marks to the personages of the drama' or dubbing them progressive or reactionary. To Florinsky, by contrast, practically every actor on the Russian stage was a more or less futile or farcical figure: apart perhaps from one or two notorious bad characters such as Tsars Peter III and Paul I, whose reputations he took a perverse pleasure in rescuing.
Such amiable and even stimulating eccentri- cities do not occur in this new study, and the gain in seriousness outweighs a certain loss in piquancy: for though Seton-Watson does not entirely avoid 'readability,' he certainly does not go out of his way to pursue it. His book is, therefore, not so much designed to recruit new addicts of Russian history as to provide for those already hooked. Among its many virtues is the expansion of a theme which had figured in other works by the same author: the special role played in Russian history by the small élite of educated persons sometimes called by the misleading term intelligentsia.
Seton-Watson sees Russia as an early proto- type of the 'underdeveloped' country in which modernisation and industrialisation have taken place not (as in Britain and elsewhere) as a more or less organic process, but as part of a deliberate policy of imitation fostered by government. He thus pays close attention to the development of Russian education, which suf- fered from the maintenance of an elitist and class-based principle long after this had ceased to be defensible, as it conceivably was under Nicholas I. He points out that the Japan= did much better in rising from underdevelop- ment.
Talented, brave and resourceful as any in- dividuals in the world, the Russians do indeed seem to have had a curse placed on their col- lective manifestations, whether of the Imperial or the Soviet period. To the student of upside- down language it will come as no surprise that some of their spokesmen or thinkers have laid claim to a special Russian talent for successful collective feeling and action: which seems to be precisely what they lack, to judge from the many unhappy features of their political and social life. A fatal addiction to autocratic rule, whether by Tsar-Emperor or communist dic- tator, has been one of the symptoms of the Russian malaise.
Seton-Watson rightly claims the auto- cratic principle as the main dominating factor in Russian history, at any rate since the Tatar conquest. In view of this I was dis- appointed not to find fuller portraits of the in- dividual autocrats, particularly of those fas- cinating figures Alexander I and Nicholas I, who emerge somewhat lessened in stature as the cesult of too austere an approach.
Seton-Watson is a student of the world at large as well as of Eastern Europe, and in this aspect too his study gains over Florinsky's, Parallels with events as far away as Spain and the Philippines, as well as Japan. are used with great effect. A close knowledge of affairs in such peripheral countries or parts of Imperial Russia as Poland. Rumania and Finland has also contributed much of value, as has the study of Russian colonialism in Central Asia, to which much attention is rightly allotted. Russians were every bit as colonialist as the British, and the fact that there happened to be salt water between mother country and colonies in the one case, and not in the other, is neither here nor there. Thus the similarities between Russian rule in Samarkand and British rule in Calcutta may well be greater than the differ- ences. Except, of course, that the Russians still hold Samarkand . . . while continuing to pose as more-anticolonialist-than-thou.
Historial erudition is here backed by lin- guistic expertise to provide a considerable con- tribution to Russian history: a study which seems likely to establish itself as the outstand- ing standard work with this particular scope. To conclude with a niggling note, the spelling of Russian names is inconsistent: and the author even, disarmingly, craves indulgence in this matter for certain foibles.
This is a pity. How can lesser contributors on Russian themes be expected to eschew their usual appalling sloppiness when even one of our leading authorities occasionally nods? And by intent!
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