Suchergebnisse

The works of Kliuchevskii, from the Boyar Council of Old Russia and studies of saints and historians to the five-volume Course of Russian History, advanced philosophy of history, even though he thought creating such a view impossible. In the judgment of Russia's most influential historian, neither intellectuals nor rulers nor liberals nor conservatives determined the course of events. Instead, the endless interaction of constantly shifting elements gradually produced change, helping every period in a nation's past to ripen into its successor. Almost invisible changes within the economy, social groups, and administration and the gradual growth of Western influence over centuries constituted the steps that determined Russian history's slow flow. Kliuchevskii never read Marx and Marxist thought did not affect him, but he awakened many to the role of economic forces and helped prepare for some Russians' acceptance of Marxism.

Despite the richness of primary sources covering the 1917-1921 period of Soviet history, the swirl of events and disagreements over policy among the Bolsheviks make the period confusing for the scholar. In this confusion and understandable disorder, the goals and policies of the Soviet leaders were remarkably consistent: They sought to acquire and retain full control. Lenin and his colleagues were fully aware of the importance of history and of those who wrote and taught it. In their new world, history was to provide the scientific explanation of the past and provide guidance for the future, but acquiring power and beginning construction of the new society occupied higher priorities for them than did the, historical profession.

The Soviet Union confronts grave needs for reform because it achieved impressive progress upon old foundations, struggles with a systemic economic slowdown, faces fundamental social and spiritual infrastructured problems, wrestles with a costly overextended empire, and must adapt to the age of knowledge that challenges its centralized control. Soviet leaders recognize the need to restructure the economic and political system, but they consider innovation an ideologically unacceptable hazard to its values, and its control. Change would threaten the primacy of the military share of economic resources, the high priority foreign policy receives to provide legitimacy, and control of Eastern Europe. Only corrections and minor repairs in the economy are likely in a system that lacks a reform mechanism.