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Book Review
| The Russian Moment in World History. By MARSHALL T. POE. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. 116 + xv pp. $17.95 (cloth).
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Marshall Poe has written a stimulating essay on Russian history whose intent is, in the best (historical) sense of the word, contentious. The term fits both his approach to his subject, and the characteristics that he attributes to that "Russian moment" of world-historical import. He indicates at the outset his hope that his book "fosters its share" of debate, which for him holds "much of the enjoyment of history" (p. xiv). His wish is bound to be fulfilled. Throughout the eight chapters that carry his tale from the Slavs to Gorbachev, he asserts in firm (categorical) terms the truth of his interpretation. That, he modestly notes, "rests on and appeals to common sense" (p. xv). Would that Russia's past were so easily explained! |
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His "Russian moment" consists, in simplest terms, of a Russian warfare state doing more or less successful battle with "Europe." The two parties are irreconcilably opposed, despite moments of apparent rapprochement. Their differences arise from the belligerence of the Europeans, whose "imperialism" forms the permanent backdrop and inducement to Russia's historical "moment." From the time of the Muscovite tsars until the Soviet (Stalinist) party-state, the ruthless, authoritarian Russian state, backed by a resolute "ruling class," successfully withstood the onslaught of European foes. Indeed, in Poe's reading of the five-hundred-year conflict, its ongoing resistance made it the sole "traditional early modern power" able to "withstand the assault of the Europeans," whose "modernity came bloody-minded and well-armed" (p.72). But when in the late twentieth century the Communist Party "lost faith in the Russian path," Russia no longer stood on its own and its "moment" had passed. Gorbachev's reform agenda, which he explained in part by arguing that his country belonged in "the common house of Europe," was not in Poe's telling a victory for human rights or democracy, but a defeat for "the Russian Tradition" (p.89). This is, at the very least, a tendentious conclusion. |
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