Ruling Russia: Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin - Softcover

Zimmerman, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691169322 ISBN 13: 9780691169323

Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many hoped that Russias centuries-long history of autocratic rule might finally end. Yet todays Russia appears to be retreating from democracy, not progressing toward it. Ruling Russia is the only book of its kind to trace the history of modern Russian politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the presidency of Vladimir Putin. It examines the complex evolution of communist and post-Soviet leadership in light of the latest research in political science, explaining why the democratization of Russia has all but failed. William Zimmerman argues that in the 1930s the USSR was totalitarian but gradually evolved into a normal authoritarian system, while the post-Soviet Russian Federation evolved from a competitive authoritarian to a normal authoritarian system in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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William Zimmerman is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan, where he is also research professor emeritus at the Institute for Social Research.

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"Zimmerman provides specialists in comparative politics with important insights about authoritarian, totalitarian, and democratic regimes. He reveals the importance of uncertain political outcomes, the size of the selectorate, and the constraints posed by institutions in distinguishing not just between democracy and dictatorship but also among different types of authoritarian regimes. He makes the deceptively simple point that regimes do not just rise and fall--they also evolve."--Valerie Jane Bunce, Cornell University

"Ruling Russia is a masterful survey of Soviet and post-Soviet political history. Zimmerman analyzes the successive phases of expansion and contraction of the circle of those who influence the choice of leaders and policies from Lenin through Putin. Written in a clear and forceful style, the book is the first major overview of the continuities and changes in Russian leadership politics from 1917 to the present."--Thomas F. Remington, Emory University

"Zimmerman makes a unique and innovative contribution to our thinking about the evolution of Soviet and Russian politics since 1917. With brilliance and welcome flashes of wry humor, he leads readers through the history of both Soviet and post-Soviet politics, right through to today. Ruling Russia is an important book."--George W. Breslauer, author of Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders

"This is an excellent book. Ruling Russia presents a unified account of nearly a century of Russian politics from one of the best and best-known political scientists specializing in this topic, pulling together what for many scholars would be more than a lifetime's work on both the USSR and post-Soviet Russia."--Henry E. Hale, author of Why Not Parties in Russia?: Democracy, Federalism, and the State

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Ruling Russia

Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin

By William Zimmerman

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16932-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii, 
Introduction, 1, 
Chapter One From Democratic Centralism to Democratic Centralism, 14, 
Chapter Two Alternative Mobilization Strategies, 1917–1934, 43, 
Chapter Three From Narrow Selectorate to Autocracy, 75, 
Chapter Four The Great Purge, 102, 
Chapter Five From Totalitarianism to Welfare Authoritarianism, 130, 
Chapter Six Uncertainty and "Democratization": The Evolution of Post-Brezhnevian Politics, 1982–1991, 164, 
Chapter Seven Democratizing Russia, 1991–1997, 196, 
Chapter Eight The Demise of Schumpeterian Democracy, the Return to Certainty, and Normal ("Full") Authoritarianism, 1998–2008, 220, 
Chapter Nine The Return of Uncertainty? The 2011–2012 Electoral Cycle, 267, 
Chapter Ten The Past and Future of Russian Authoritarianism, 291, 
Afterword to the Paperback Edition, 311, 
Selected Bibliography, 327, 
Index, 339, 

CHAPTER 1

From Democratic Centralism to Democratic Centralism

The Bolsheviks successfully seized power in the fall 1917. Historians dispute the support the Bolsheviks received in accomplishing that goal. This is an argument among people with strong views, some of whom are more reasonable than others. What is beyond dispute is that the phrase "Bolshevik coup d'état" presupposes the existence of an état. The wags' retort that there was no état to coup, its flipness notwithstanding, is to the point. The key institutions of the entire Soviet period emerged out of that institutional vacuum during the four-year period from October 1917 to the March 1921 Tenth Party Congress, when the ban on factions within the Party and the New Economic Policy (NEP) were adopted.

What bears in mind in reading the present chapter are two points. First, the period was initially characterized by more open politics and greater attention to regularized voting within a small selectorate than at any time from March 1921 until the late 1980s during Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as CPSU general secretary. Second, the story of the four years after the seizure of power is one of a steadily narrowing selectorate as the country became increasingly authoritarian. Among the party leaders disregard for procedural niceties grew but regularized voting remained an important aspect of decision making. It got far worse subsequently. (The colossal violence that attended regime-society relations during War Communism is described at the beginning of the next chapter, where the central argument is that aside from the interventions of multiple foreign states there not only was a civil war between the White and the Reds but an at least equally violent civil war between the Reds and the Greens.)

By far the most open election in Russian politics prior to the Gorbachev era occurred almost immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power. I have in mind the election of the Constituent Assembly. It was, Oliver H. Radkey tells us, a "fundamentally free election, contested by definitely organized and sharply divergent parties, on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage." In an overwhelmingly peasant country, it is not a surprise to learn that the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), a strongly pro-peasant party, got the most votes by a large plurality. The Bolsheviks finished second overall and way ahead of the other parties, but well behind the SRs.

In the strategically significant cities, as Radkey again makes clear, two trends stand out from examining the voting results. First, the cities became increasingly polarized between June and December 1917. Voters were increasingly taking sides with either the Bolsheviks or the strongest "bourgeois liberal" party, one that favored constitutional democracy, the Constitutional Democrats (hence the abbreviation, Kadety). In Moscow (the pattern is rather similar for Petrograd [now again St. Petersburg]), elections for various levels of government took place in June, September, and November. From June to November, the vote for the SRs shrank from approximately 375,000 to about 62,000, with roughly the same number of votes cast in November as in June. The vote for the Kadets increased from slightly less than a 110,000 to almost 264,000, while the Bolshevik vote increased from 75,000 to 366,000.

Second, as these figures bear out, the shift in the Bolsheviks' favor gave them some claim that they were on the side of history. Persuading themselves that this was the case, Lenin's "Theses on the Constituent Assembly" made clear that he and the majority of the Bolshevik leadership were reluctantly allowing the vote to take place but that they would brook no notions that the Constituent Assembly should in any way interfere with "Soviet power." Should it attempt to do so, matters would be "settled in a revolutionary way." This is what happened: the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly a day after it first met.

The timing of the voting for the Constituent Assembly has engendered some confusion. Despite the occurrence of the actual voting in the weeks immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power, it was the Provisional Government and not the Bolsheviks that authorized the election of the Constituent Assembly delegates. The resulting election has been properly termed "one of history's first universal adult suffrage voting systems." It is a mistake, however, to characterize it as part of a Bolshevik grand strategy of combining closely held power with symbolic universalism. That came later.

Rather, the elections the Bolsheviks themselves conducted prior to the adoption of the 1936 "Stalin" Constitution were ones in which categories of people were systematically underrepresented or disenfranchised. The 1918 Constitution explicitly disenfranchised "those who employ others for the sake of profit," capitalists, private business men, "monks and priests of all religious denominations," the tsarist police and its agents, members of the former ruling family, and those who are "mentally deranged or imbecile."

Similarly, in a manner akin to the elections to the Duma after the Russian Revolution of 1905 and prior to World War I, the peasantry were systematically underrepresented. Both the Russian Constitution of 1918 and the first Soviet Constitution (1924) established that the Congress of Soviets would consist of "representatives of city and town soviets on the basis of one deputy for each 25,000 voters and of representatives of provincial and district congresses of soviets on the basis of one deputy for every 125,000 inhabitants." Clearly, given that the villagers were explicitly discriminated against, it makes little sense to consider them as a group as part of a selectorate or to regard elections in which they were treated as second-class citizens as "universal adult suffrage voting systems." Prior to 1936 (by which time the kulaks had been liquidated as a class and the putative capitalist exploiters had largely been killed or imprisoned) only the urban working class was fully enfranchised.

In the earliest months of the Bolsheviks' tenure in power, when Lenin himself chaired the meetings of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), a case could be made that the workers in general should be considered part of the selectorate. They were certainly beneficiaries of the new regime. During periods of extreme hardship they stood at the head of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691169322
• ISBN 13: 9780691169323
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 345
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar