Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review

State and Society in Stalinist Russia

Author(s): Roberta T. Manning
Source: The Russian Review, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp. 407-411
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
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The Russian Review, vol. 46, 1987, pp. 407 -411

State and Society in StalinistRussia

ROBERTAT. MANNING

The discussion of the social history of the Stalin era published in the
winter 1986 issue of this journal must have bewildered many readers. Only
weeks earlier,several partiesto this dispute-Stephen Cohen, Sheila Fitzpatrick,
Arch Getty and myself-were identified in Slavic Review as revisionist histori-
ans who have "attemptedto rehabilitateLeninism and sometimes even Stalin-
ism."' Difficulties in comprehendingthe differences discussed were enhanced
by the fact thatnone of the participantsin the discussion, save Sheila Fitzpatrick
herself, were fully acquainted with the body of scholarship examined. The
terms applied to the new scholarship,like "revisionism" and "new social his-
tory," added to the confusion by identifying these works with different kinds of
studies similarlylabeled.
It seems to me that what is happeningin the field of Soviet history today is
the appearanceof a "second generation" of revisionist scholars, a generationby
no means confined to the "cohort" named in the Russian Review discussion.
The work of these new scholars differs markedly from that produced by first-
generation revisionists, like Stephen Cohen, Moshe Lewin and Robert Tucker,
whose studies significantly expanded our knowledge of the political and social
history of the early USSR. First-generationrevisionists entered Soviet studies
when the totalitarianmodel reigned unchallenged. Much of their scholarly
efforts have been directedat "rolling back" the totalitarianthesis insofar as the
pre-Stalin period is concerned, especially the NEP. But they have accepted
without questioning the totalitarianschool's vision of the Stalin era. Indeed, in
an effort to "rehabilitate" Leninism and Bukharinismfrom the taint of Stalin-
ism, first-generationrevisionists tend to portray Stalinism in a more negative
light than did earlier,more conservative scholars.2
Second-generationrevisionists have extended the questioningof the totali-
tarianthesis to the prewar Stalin era, including the period of the Great Purges.

1 See
Stephen Blank's review of A. Zimin, U istokov Stalinizma, 1918-1922, in Slavic Review,
vol. 45, no. 2 (1986), pp. 336-337.
2
Compare, for example, works like Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge,
MA, 1958) and Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in Soviet Russia
(Cambridge, MA, 1959) with recent publications by first-generationrevisionists, like Robert C.
Tucker, ed., Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation(New York, 1977); Moshe Lewin, The
Making of the Soviet System:Essays on InterwarRussia (New York, 1985); and Stephen F. Cohen,
Rethinkingthe Soviet Experience:Politics and History since 1917 (New York, 1985).

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 408 TheRussian Review

In so doing, we eschew the political goals espoused by many American Soviet

specialists, who are unable to conceive of scholarshipother than an enterprise
undertakento "indict" and/or "rehabilitate" particularindividuals or move-
ments. The body of work that we are beginning to produce presents a
correspondinglydetailed, complex, and nuancedview of Stalinism.
Second-generationrevisionists share much with Sheila Fitzpatrick,espe-
cially her commitmentto the empirical investigation of the 1930s and her faith
in the value of politically disengaged scholarship. Fitzpatrick's studies of the
CulturalRevolution and social mobility revealed aspects of Soviet society that
no one had realized existed; she demonstratedthat scholarshipon the Stalin era
need not be shapedby past and presentcontroversiesamong Russians.3
We differ with Fitzpatrick,however, on two related issues-the direction
in which the study of Soviet history should move and the relationshipof state
and society in the Stalin era. In "New Perspectives on Stalinism," Fitzpatrick
argues that social historiansof the Soviet period should leave the study of poli-
tics in the hands of political scientists and content themselves with the practice
of social history pure and simple, like the new social historiansof other lands (p.
373). In so arguing, she overlooks the fact that social historians of prerevolu-
tionary Russia, unlike those of other lands, have never neglected politics and
stand in the forefront of current efforts by social historians "to include the
state."4 Since we were exposed to the social history of prerevolutionaryRussia
as graduate students, we are not likely to abandon the study of politics as a
matterof little concern to social historians.
Indeed, it is precisely in dealing with politics, especially the relation of
state and society in Stalin's Russia, that second-generationrevisionists depart
most from established norms, as Fitzpatricksuggests in her discussion of our
work (pp. 367-72). Our still developing and far from unanimousvision of the
Stalinist polity, not our "neglect" of political terror, constitutes our real
"heresy." Political terror and its origins, after all, have been and remain a
majorfocus of our research.5
Earlier Soviet specialists in this country tended to accept the Russian
intelligentsia's vision of a clear-cut distinction between state and society as the

3 Sheila Fitzpatrick,ed., CulturalRevolutionin Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington, IN, 1978) and

Sheila Fitzpatrick,Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934 (Cambridge,
1979).
4 See David Ransel's review of my Crisis of the Old Order in Russia in Journal of Interdisci-
plinary History, vol. 14, no. 4 (spring 1984), p. 854.
5 For
example, see J. Arch Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges, (Cambridge,1985); Gabor
Rittersporn,"The State against Itself: Social Tendencies and Political Conflict in the USSR, 1936-
1938," Telos, no. 41 (1979) and his other works listed in his contributionto this discussion; Roberta
T. Manning, "The Case of the Miffed Milkmaid or How the Great Purges Came to the Sychevka
Livestock BreedingStation:Documents and Analysis," (book manuscriptin progress);Lynne Viola,
"The Case of KrasnyiMelioratoror 'How the Kulak Grows into Socialism,' " Soviet Studies, vol.
38, no. 4 (1986), pp. 508-529; and Lynne Viola, "The Campaignto Eliminate the Kulak as a Class,
Winter 1930: A Reevalutionof the Legislation," Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 3 (1986), pp. 503-524.

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 State and Society 409

dominantcharacteristicof the Russian body politic. Such views gave rise to the
juridical school of ImperialRussian historiansand to the totalitarianmodel, both
of which attributedto the Russian state the ability to dominate, control and
shape Russian society to suit its political needs.6 In the last decade this vision of
Russian politics has been largely abandonedby students of ImperialRussia, as
boundariesbetween state and society have become increasinglyblurred. At the
same time, the totalitarianthesis has been discardedby many scholars as an obs-
tacle to understandingthe USSR before and after Stalin's time.
Up until now the Stalin period has remained relatively impervious to a
similarreassessmentof state-societyrelations. The sole exception was the work
of Sheila Fitzpatrick,particularlyher original vision of the Stalin (or Cultural)
Revolution as the productof uncontrollableinterventionsin the political process
by various elements in society, if not a period of outright"class war." Fitzpa-
trick, however, has recently repudiatedthese views and now characterizesthe
Stalin Revolutionas a "revolution from above" pure and simple.7
Fitzpatrickevidently has come to view state-society relations as a simple
"either-or" proposition. Eitherthe state alone is capable of shaping the histori-
cal process, with society reducedto passive tools of those at the helm of govern-
ment, or else "society" must call the political tune, forcing the state (or the
Leader) to accommodatethe desires of particularsocial strataout of fear of pro-
voking revolution. Any advocate of a role for society in the historicalprocess is
left with the impossible task of proving that the Soviet governmentwould have
been engulfed in revolutionhad not certainpolicies been pursued. The possibil-
ity that the state (or certain elements within the state, including Stalin) and ele-
ments in society might act in tandem,moved by overlappingbut far from identi-
cal political agendas, is not even considered. Yet such an interpretationis more
consistent with the available evidence than a "revolution from above" pure and
simple, which has never been empirically demonstrated,but rests on the accep-
tance of Stalin's own claims.8
Second-generationrevisionists find it difficult to conceive of Soviet poli-
tics in the Stalin era as an "either-or" proposition. We tend to respond to the
question, "From above or from below?" with the answer, "Both." We find the
boundaries between state and society in the pre-war Soviet period hopelessly
indefinite. After all, the ruling Communist Party grew between seven- and
eightfold in the period 1924-1933 through a massive influx of the same lower
class elements that are the traditional subject matter of social history.9 Such
newcomers could easily find themselves "pushed upstairs" in the political

6
Fitzpatrick,CulturalRevolution,especially pp. 1-40.
7 "New Perspectiveson Stalinism," pp. 369-373.
8 See, for
example, the referencesin Robert C. Tucker, "Stalinism as Revolution from Above"
in Tucker,ed., Stalinism,pp. 77-108. Fitzpatrickhas characterizedthis article as the best statement
of the revolution-from-abovethesis.
9 T. H. Rigby, CommunistParty Membershipin the U.S.S.R., 1917-1967 (Princeton, 1968), p.
52; Fitzpatrick,Educationand Social Mobility,pp. 87-123.

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 410 The Russian Review

system, as annual turnover rates among officials at all levels remained shock-
ingly high, even in years not known for high levels of political terror.10
Moreover, there are intermediary groups hard to characterize as either
"state" or "society," like the Komsomol, the never clearly defined but always
present "aktiv," political volunteers such as the twenty-five thousanders, pro-
duction conferences, self-appointed rabkory and sel'kory, not to mention the
ubiquitous demobilized soldiers and Stakhanovites who somehow felt "enti-
tled" by their services to their country to attack local power structures. All of
these frequently intervened in the political process, pulled in by the chronic
weakness of the understaffed formal bureaucratic structures.1 Traditional
Sovietologists manage to avoid facing these dilemmas by arbitrarily defining all
participants in the political process as agents of the state. The fact that the
authorities frequently failed to achieve their political goals because the goals of
their local agents were different is simply ignored. Second-generation revision-
ists, however, seek to explore these unique characteristics of pre-war Soviet pol-
itics by turning to local studies and paying increasing attention to lower and
middle levels of officialdom and to intermediary forces, both as political actors
and as important social groups in Soviet society in their own right.
This insistence on studying Russian politics and society outside the Krem-
lin walls does not mean that we disdain high politics or seek to "rehabilitate"
Stalin, as is often alleged. We are simply trying to correct an imbalance in the
scholarship, which has focused on the apex of the political system. Indeed,
much of the strength and persistence of the totalitarian thesis with respect to the
Stalin years is that it has never been adequately tested. Testing requires many
detailed studies of different events, social strata and and levels of government to
determine whether Stalin all by himself in all instances determined everything.12

10 For this see, J. Arch

Getty and William J. Chase, "Patternsof State and PartyOfficeholdingin
the Soviet Bureaucracy,1929-1931," paperpresentedto the National Seminaron the Social History
of Twentieth-CenturyRussia, Philadelphia,1983.
1 For recent works on these intermediary
groups, see CulturalRevolution in Russia, pp. 23-27;
Lynne Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workersin the Vanguardof the Stalin Revolution,
(New York, 1987); William J. Chase, Workers,Society and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Mos-
cow, 1918-1929, (Urbana,IL, 1987); Mark von Hagen, "School of Socialism: The Red Army and
the Peasantry,1918-30, paperpresentedto the National Seminaron the Social History of Twentieth-
CenturyRussia, Bloomington, IN, 1986; William Burgess, "The 'Sel'kor': The Reporterfrom the
Village," paperpresentedto the same seminar;Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovitesand the Politics of
Productivity,(Cambridge,forthcoming);Lewis Siegelbaum, "Soviet Norm Determinationin Theory
and Practice, 1917-1941," Soviet Studies, vol. 36, no. 1 (1984), pp. 45-68; and Peter H. Solomon Jr.,
"Local Political Power and Soviet Criminal Justice, 1922-1941," Soviet Studies, vol. 37, no. 3
(1985), pp. 305-329. On the understaffingof administrativestructures,see Roberta T. Manning,
"Governmentin the Soviet Countrysidein the Stalinist Thirties: the Case of Belyi Raion in 1937,"
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East EuropeanStudies, no. 301, pp. 16-22.
12 Fainsod's Smolensk under Soviet Rule remains the only scholarly effort to demonstratethe
validity of the totalitarianthesis empirically. His interpretationof the materials in the Smolensk
archive has been contested by scholars who have recently worked with them. See, for example,
Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges, especially pp. 25-37 and 223.

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 State and Society 411

Paradoxicallyonly by ceasing to focus exclusively on Stalin can we ever begin

to assess his role and place in Russian history.

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