The Russia That We Have Preserved

The Russia that we have preserved.

Maxim Lyubovsky

To my father,

who throughout my childhood had the crackling short wave radio tuned to the Voice of America and who introduced me to samizdat literature, setting me on the course to writing this book.

As the title suggests, this book is about Russia. As it has multiple times over the past three centuries, Russia has managed to wedge itself into the middle of world politics again, exerting influence far beyond its economic and population potential. But then, time after time, it stumbles, falling apart, almost disappearing from the world stage, only to come back a couple decades later to claim its place at the center of global affairs. How does Russia manage to mobilize its resources to compete with most of the rest of the world over and over again? What makes it crumble, but then revive itself again and again?

The book, though, is not just about Russia. It is also about the West. It argues that in the 13th-15th centuries Russia and Europe had developed fundamentally different types of social structures. In Europe, in the absence of a dominant force, various parties striving for power had to negotiate and search for compromises, which over generations led to the development of the Western type of society based on balance of power and a system of laws. The Russian state, on the contrary, was created under the dominating influence of an overwhelming Mongol force. This led to the formation of an Asian type of society that is built as a single administrative Pyramid in which power spreads from top down and is based on a coercive force of the state apparatus. This Asian structure of society has survived multiple transformations throughout the tumultuous Russian history and is now going through yet another cycle.

About the author.

Maxim Lyubovsky was born in the Soviet Union and lived through Perestroika, the breakup of the USSR, and the first tumultuous years of the Russian democracy. In the 90s he came to the United States as a graduate student at Yale University and was struck by how the very basic social concepts, like country and state, private and public, law and order were understood very differently by the Russian and American people. Yale University provided ample resources to investigate and analyze these observations, which resulted in writing this book.

Copyright ©

Maxim Lyubovsky

Russia.preserved@gmail.com

Copyright ©  1996  by Maxim Lyubovsky

English translation copyright © 2019 by Maxim Lyubovsky

This publication is in copyright. No reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission from Maxim Lyubovsky

ISBN: 978-1-7336512-1-9

Preface of 2019.

As the title suggests, this book is about Russia. As it had multiple times over the past three centuries, Russia has managed to wedge itself in the middle of world politics again, exerting influence far beyond its economic and human potential. But then, time after time, it stumbles, losing it all, falling apart, almost disappearing from the world stage, only to come back a couple decades later to again claim its place at the center of global affairs. As Henry Kissinger eloquently put it in his book World Order: …[Russia’s] policy has pursued a special rhythm of its own over the centuries, expanding over a landmass spanning nearly every climate and civilization, interrupted occasionally for a time by the need to adjust its domestic structure to the vastness of the enterprise – only to return again, like a tide crossing a beach. From Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, circumstances have changed, but the rhythm has remained extraordinarily consistent.

How does Russia manage to mobilize its resources to compete over and over with most of the rest of the world? What makes it crumble but then revive itself again and again? What drives that special rhythm?

The book, though, is not just about Russia. It is also about the West. It attempts to compare and contrast the most fundamental, underlying features of the Russian and Western societies. It argues that in the 13th-15th centuries Russia and Europe had developed fundamentally different types of social structures. In Europe, in the absence of a dominant force, various parties striving for power had to negotiate and search for compromises, which over generations led to the development of the Western type of society based on balance of power and a system of laws. The Russian state, on the contrary, was created under dominating influence of an overwhelming Mongol force which led to formation of the Asian type of society built as a single administrative Pyramid, in which power spreads from top down and is based on a coercive force of the state apparatus. (The name Asian system does not refer to Asia in the contemporary sense, but to the Asia of the vast open planes where nomad Mongol tribes moved around following their herds). Looking through the key moments in Russian history, the book analyzes how the Asian type of society developed and preserved itself over the centuries, and how it explains the apparent differences in relations between people and political cultures of Russia and the West.

The fact that Russia for many centuries was able to compete with the countries of the West suggests that the Asian system of power was able to establish a certain order in the society needed to ensure successful technological and military development of the country. But this order was based on completely different principles than the democratic and legal order which originally developed in the counties of Western Europe, and which later formed the bases for the constitutional order in the USA and is gradually spreading around the world now.  

Of course, the division into a Western-type society and an Asian-type society made in this book is a gross simplification of the vast variety of relations between people in any part of the world. As any simplified model, it allows to isolate and highlight broad underlying mechanisms important for development of a particular system, while neglecting complications brought by numerous finer influences. The first part of the book in particular, describes a general theory of the Asian social system, history of creation and common features of the Russian Pyramid, highlighting the basic underlying differences in relations between people in Russia and in the West.  The second part applies this model to reviewing several critical moments in Russian history, showing how the theoretical model correlates with the actual events.

The text was originally written in Russian in 1996, shortly after I came to the United States as a graduate student at Yale University. Growing up in the Soviet Union and living through Perestroika, the breakup of the USSR and the first tumultuous years of the Russian democracy, upon arrival to the United States, I was immediately struck by the profound differences in the worldview between Russian and American people. While people in both countries had very similar aspirations to live happy and healthy lives, make more money, travel the world and enjoy life, their understanding of the most fundamental social concepts such as how society operates, what constitutes law and order, what unalienable rights people have, and what the division between the role of government and obligations of private citizens should be, was nearly complete opposite. (Remarkably, these differences remain pretty much unscathed today). Yale University provided ample resources to further investigate and analyze these observations. I had an opportunity to attend a seminar on Russian political history led by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, who encouraged my explorations and spent many hours discussing the initial drafts of the text. The help and encouragement that Lt. Gen. Odom gave me were an invaluable contribution to the writing of this book.

The outlook on global liberal order in 1996 was very different than it is now. It was the year of apparent final defeat of Communism in that year’s Russian presidential elections and the time of Fukuyama’s end of history, when a rapid spread of liberal democratic order all over the world was a commonplace expectation. Writing the text, I assumed that it would be of interest to people in Russia and hold primarily a historical value. While describing multiple reincarnations of the Asian social system throughout Russian history, I did not expect that it could re-emerge again. After all, the theory argues that survival of the Asian system requires strict isolation from the rest of the world, which seemed to become impossible in the modern world. In the last chapter asking if the The Russia that we have preserved could survive, I was thoroughly expecting the answer to be negative.

The ensuing twenty years have clearly shown that my expectations were wrong. The Asian system in Russia has survived and is going through yet another cycle following that special rhythm. The predictions made in the last two chapters of the book, which at the time of writing appeared to be a purely theoretical undertaking, turned out to be remarkably accurate. Furthermore, because of rapidly growing interconnection of the world and dissolving borders, the Asian system seems to be metastasizing into other parts of the globe. With many signs of the next looming crisis which will affect the globalized world much more dramatically than the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 did, I realized that the ideas described in this book may be of interest to a broader, English speaking audience.

Fortunately, computer technologies over the past 20 years progressed even faster than social order did. Google Translate made translating the text into English almost automatic, and my now adult, native-speaking daughter helped with cleaning the text into a clear, legible format. Obviously, if writing today, the text would come out somewhat different. I might have used different examples and epithets, expanded on certain points and omitted others. Still I find that the overall argument remains accurate and relevant. So, I have decided to just translate the original text, making only minor editorial changes and suppressing the urges to expand and explain on the thoughts of 20 years ago. (Unfortunately, I found it impossible to translate into English the four-line stanzas by Russian-Jewish poet Igor Guberman which I used as epigraphs in the Russian text. Amazingly, these short verses often explain more about life in the Soviet Union than thick political volumes do. I strongly encourage the readers who know even a little Russian to check the epigraphs in the original Russian version of the text, which can be found at http://samlib.ru/l/ljubowskij_m_r/).

As the text was originally written in Russian, and was intended for readers familiar with Russian history and politics, many names and events are referenced in the text without providing detailed background information or historical context. The reader is encouraged to use external sources, Google and Wikipedia to obtain supplemental background information. I hope that this book will give the reader a new outlook on the events of Russian past and present, and that this historical analysis may help to better explain the current state of affairs in Russia and maybe help predict the future course of events.

Preface of 1996.

In the early 90's – the very end of the Perestroika period in the USSR - a documentary titled The Russia that we have lost by an acclaimed director Stanislav Govorukhin came out. The main idea of the film was that over the 70 years of the Soviet rule, Russia had changed beyond recognition. The society that existed in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century was completely destroyed, and all the tragedies of the last seventy years could be viewed as a consequence of the socialist revolution. The view that Russia had changed beyond recognition and that the post-revolutionary society was built on a completely different base than the one that existed in Russia before the revolution is widespread both among the Russian and the Western historians. Undoubtedly, the Great October Socialist Revolution was the largest shock in the history of the country (and indeed of the whole world), which predetermined the great achievements and terrible tragedies of the people throughout the 20th century. The current disputes over the ways of Russia's development often boil down to whether the Revolution and Socialism brought more successes or tragedies. Moreover, depending on the political position, each party often recalls only one part of the story, ignoring the other. But in this dispute, both sides accept the revolution as the event which turned Russia away from the mainstream development path of the world, as an event that completely changed the whole structure of the Russian society. It is assumed that before the revolution, Russia was successfully moving along the development path common for all the peoples (though it might have been slightly behind Europe, it was successfully catching up) and did not have those fundamental differences from the Western countries that we see now.

However, in the 19th century, long before the arrival of the communist ideology to Russia, the prominent Russian historians and philosophers Karamzin, Kluchevsky, Soloviev, Berdyaev described the Russian people as special people, having their own destiny, chosen by God. Arguments between the Westerners and the Slavophiles parties among Russian intelligentsia about the destiny of the Russian people and people's character has been going on for centuries (and are resuming now). The descriptions of the European customs in Russian chronicles and the stories of European travelers about Russian life show the profound differences in the way of life and the perception of the world between the Russian and European people existing