CHAPTER 14

Russia: Five Centuries of Authoritarian Reform

Russia has been an authoritarian society since at least the sixteenth century. The major decisions on land tenure, use of labor, prices, and production have always been made by a small elite, who have foreclosed the participation of others. Unlike northwestern Europe and Japan, this condition has been continuous, down to the present day. It was not interrupted by the emancipation of serfs in 1861, nor by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, nor by glasnost and perestroika in the 1990s, nor by the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Chapter 5, I speculated that land scarcity may underlie the origins of the power-diffusion process. Let us turn to the vast expanse of space, which allowed Russians to avoid vertical communication and negotiation in the Middle Ages. Ever since then wars, escapes, and migrations over the centuries may have made unnecessary the pluralism of northwestern Europe and Japan and prevented the power-diffusion process from starting — until perhaps now.

Abundance of Land

Abundance of land led first, to free occupation by free labor in the tenth to fifteenth centuries, and second, to the birth of coerced rather than contract feudalism in the sixteenth.

In Kievan Russia, during the tenth to thirteenth centuries, land holdings were often acquired by simple occupation. Upon the decline of the Kievan Federation, princes of the Oka-Volga triangle "invited peasants to settle as free renters holding directly from the prince, offering them long exemptions from all obligations, light dues when they did have to start paying them, communal autonomy, and freedom of movement." [1] The freedom of landholding during the Mongol period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also implies abundance: "there were no restrictions on the right to own land." [2]

Paradoxically, the same forces that gave rise to peasant freedom in the tenth to the fifteenth centuries contributed to enserfment in the sixteenth. Prior experience with contract feudalism had been lacking. When economic circumstances required greater organization of labor, this was undertaken by the powerful rather than arranged by contract. Domar recognized this causation: "Thus both ingredients for the development of serfdom — a high land/labor ratio and the government's determination to create a class of servitors — were present." [3]

Land abundance, with its possibility for peasants to escape their misery through migration, is a Russian theme right up to the end of the nineteenth century. [4] In contrast to the feudalism of western Europe, therefore, the peasant in Russia was relatively free before the sixteenth century, being able to move and to hold his own property. Just as feudalism was being dismantled in the West, however, it was tightened in the East. [5]

Anticipating Goodell, Feldbrugge also argues that the "hierarchy of reciprocal feudal relationships" that developed in the West, "providing a delicate balance of power, and of rights and duties, between various social classes," did not arise in Kievan Russia in part because of "the importance of trade." [6] But he does not explain this further, in the manner of Goodell.

Dukes suggests that peasants were free in the Middle Ages because an authoritarian government, which had not yet evolved, was a prerequisite to feudalism. [7] Blum believes that feudalism was delayed because the nobility could not enforce it until they had won their struggle with the princes and the towns, to become "the class on which the throne depended." [8] This happened in the sixteenth century. Also, "an urban bourgeoisie strong enough to act as a countervailing force to the nobility did not emerge in eastern Europe." [9] For this reason, the peasants missed the opportunity for leverage through vertical alliance with town power.

All these explanations are likely correct and are not inconsistent with each other, but they do not explain why no urban bourgeoisie evolved, or why the nobility won out over princes and town, or why the nobility did not foster industry on their own estates. The answers lie at least partly in the vastness of the Russian land. Communication was difficult, and all these classes could escape rather than understand each other. They failed to envision the opportunities of cooperation. Power concentration, persistently attenuated in the West, was reinforced in the East. Therefore, agricultural progress, so vigorous in the Kievan era, tapered off in the centuries following. Neither landlord nor peasant was motivated to improve. [10] The search for power by nobles and tsar, which depended on quantity of land and numbers of peasants rather than on output, overwhelmed any attention to agricultural development. The peasants, whose land was periodically redistributed by the commune (mir), had no incentive to improve it. Further historical references to the abundance of land in Russia are found in Appendix 14.1.

The Authoritarian State and Reform from Above

Possibly the watershed in establishing authoritarian government occurred in 1564 when Ivan IV, the Terrible, partitioned the country into crown lands (Oprichnina), mainly the prosperous northern and commercial territories, and the nation at large (Zemschina), ruled by a boyars' (aristocrats') council.

This move "openly transformed him into a despot. It allowed him absolute power over the life and property of any disobedient subject 'without advice of council.'" [11] In the Oprichnina he unleashed imperial guards sworn to total obedience, who had license to torture, maim, or kill at their pleasure. Many nobles were executed, their lands seized and given to favorites. With its economy shattered by this experience as well as the costly Livonian war, the Oprichnina was reintegrated into the greater state in 1572. Whoever mentioned its name thereafter would be sentenced to death.

With few corporate groups forming until the nineteenth century, reforms in the political and economic system have always been undertaken "from on top." The first reforms of Ivan IV, beginning in 1549, spanned the entire political and judicial systems, affecting all administration and the church as well. The new legislation was designed entirely to increase the revenue of the state. [12] His second wave of reforms, after 1557, gave greater self-rule to local communities in exchange for support in the Livonian war. [13] None of these substantially improved conditions or privileges of lower classes. Instead, military and financial reforms were linked to social dependence. [14]

Likewise, in the sixteenth century, the Shuiskys and the Belskys bid for popular support by transferring criminal proceedings to local governments; however, the new local police could employ the same methods as the central government — torture, execution without trial — and no benefit resulted for most citizens. [15]

The seventeenth century saw a peculiar combination of increased knowledge of liberalism by Russian elites, yet a strengthening of their social control. Visitors and growing trade supplied them with an intellectual and even emotional attachment to Western goods and philosophy. Instead of converting the upper classes to liberalism, however, this enlightenment widened the gap between them and common people who had not been so exposed. [16] Peasant rebellions were brutally suppressed; the tsar imposed a new religious orthodoxy which the "Old Believers" would not accept; every Russian was defined as a servitor of the state; and military expansion into the Ukraine provoked a chasm between conquerors and conquered.

In this setting, Peter the Great (r.1682-1725) set out to "westernize" his country in a comprehensive "reform from above." Visiting the Netherlands and England, he observed modern factories and technology, was deeply impressed by them, and returned to Russia to order them installed there. However, he paid no attention to the fact that Western workers were freely hired, while the Russians he sent into his factories were serfs. He mistook physical structures, technology, and processes for economic development, failing to understand its institutional foundations and social relations. [17] When Peter abolished the separate patriarchate and took personal control of the church, [18] one possibility of vertical alliance and leverage for the lower classes — rivalry between the ruler and the church — which had been available in the West, was foreclosed in Russia.

The "enlightenment" of the elite, and the chasm between it and more humble Russians, continued throughout the eighteenth century. Clendenning describes the educated foreigners who visited the court of Catherine the Great; the government's initiative to survey the empire for data on economic development and capital formation; the modernizing scientific culture; the questionnaire on the nation's productive forces sent out by the Free Economic Society in 1766; the translation of books; and other ways by which the empress followed a program just as determined and just as authoritarian as that of Peter. [19]

Indeed, Catherine's reforms in the eighteenth century bore a grim similarity not only to those of Peter but also to those proposed by foreign advisors in Russia today. The economic problems of Catherine's time were much the same as confronted by leaders of the successor states to the Soviet Union. Substitute "bureaucracy" for "nobility," "peasantry" for "serfdom," "foreign exchange" for "precious metal and silver coins," and "foreign advisors" for "Shakovskoy" in the following quotation concerning Catherine's society:

[T]he Commerce Commission's list of acute problems was lengthy: oppressed and poor capital markets, private and public ignorance of foreign commercial and trading mechanisms, poor infrastructure and a totally inadequate distribution system, paucity of credit facilities in major Russian towns together with a rapacious governmental policy toward acquiring precious metal and silver coins, undefined status of both the nobility and serfdom's role in the expansion of commerce, and too few enforceable laws regulating the wealthy merchantry vis-à-vis poorer members of that class. . . . Shakovskoy felt that the speedy removal of all trading obstacles would allow Russian merchants to act more efficiently and effectively against foreign competition. [20]

The eighteenth-century reforms brought neither total power for Moscow nor pluralism. [21] Peter the Great and the major empresses that followed him (Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II) all tried to maintain absolute power while undertaking economic programs that would have required voluntary cooperation by many. [22] Their dynamism affected the tsars who followed them. Paul (r.1796-1801) made "some tentative steps toward social reform." [23] All these reforms were organized from above, with no participation from lower classes.

Alexander I (r.1801-25) "called together an idealistic group of friends with whom he began to plan a new age." [24] He "dreamed of erecting a theocratic order on earth through God-chosen rulers and a fraternal community of nations." [25] His subsidies of commercial development and his protective tariffs were aimed at creating a state-dominated industry. [26] While the abolition of serfdom and other changes were discussed, Alexander's main achievement — besides his resistance to Napoleon — was a reform of the bureaucracy. But both the proponents (young idealists) and the opposition (older traditionalists) came entirely from the upper classes. [27] These elites talked much of abolishing serfdom and modernizing to imitate the West, just as Harvard and Stanford economists are now telling the government of Russia how to privatize industry. Evidence is scant or lacking that either the intellectuals of the early nineteenth century or the Harvard and Stanford professors of today communicated with or called for the cooperation of serfs (today, farmers) or other working classes.

"Old institutions in new organizations" applies particularly to the peasant emancipation of 1861, under Alexander II (r.1855-81). Having described this in detail in an earlier writing, [28] I merely summarize it here. In the 1830s, a small group of intelligentsia in the government of Nicholas I, "disgusted by society's materialistic values and above all by the newcomers to the public stage: entrepreneurs, merchants, and bureaucrats, . . . fervently desired symbiosis with the people, the Russian peasantry." [29] But there was no way for them either to bring the peasantry into the discussions, nor did they probably understand peasant wishes themselves. Feeling strongly the loss in the Crimean War and the backwardness of Russia compared with the West, Alexander and his intellectual advisors prepared a proclamation freeing the serfs on all imperial and noble lands. Unlike the dismantling of feudalism in northwestern Europe and Japan, the serfs did not negotiate with the lords. Indeed, they had nothing to say about the terms of their "freedom."

The freed serfs individually received no land in private property. Instead, a quantity of land slightly less than they had been accustomed to farm was split off from the estates and granted to "rural societies," a new legal entity roughly equivalent to the communes (mir), on which peasant social and political life had been based for centuries. The government lent the rural societies the money to pay the landlords 80 percent of the value of the land taken from them, the landlords losing the other 20 percent. But the peasants were required to pay for the land assigned to them, even though they did not own it outright, over a period of forty-nine years at 6 percent interest. Their inability to do so bound them to the rural society as tightly as they had previously been bound to their lords. They could not leave without permission of the elders.

Berman believes that some element of democracy was introduced by emancipation because "the reform of local government emphasized the fact of the peasantry's newly acquired citizenship. In each county, representatives were elected by the private landowners, by the peasant commune, and by the townspeople." [30] But McKee argues that the appearances were deceiving: the peasants could not vote, their representatives were frustrated by their narrow sphere of action, and the tsar usually rejected their demands. [31]

The loss of the Crimean War stimulated government concern for industrial development. But reforms in the late nineteenth century, seemingly aimed at promoting industry, in fact strengthened the tsar. These included investment in internal transportation, specifically the railroad, stabilization of the ruble, and tariff protection for new industries. [32] "[T]he government, by taxing the income of consumers, . . . deprived Russia of an alternative pattern of production, thus usurping for itself the role of an active participant and stimulant of this process." [33] Also, "only a minute part of its budget expenditures went directly for the purposes of developing the industrial sector. . . . Russian tariff policy was as much revenue oriented as protection oriented, the upward tendency in tariff rates being stimulated as much by fiscal needs as by the clamor for protection from imports. . . . [T]he burden of taxation to support the Russian political regime appears to have been the chief obstacle to a more vigorous industrial development of Russia." [34] Raeff reports that "paradoxically, reforms intended to introduce modern economic relations and European political institutions . . . ended by reinforcing the power and moral authority of the autocrat." [35] Finally, the cultural chasm between rulers and elites on the one hand and the "little people" on the other has continued into the twentieth century. Educated officials communicated but rarely with lower classes, and only in limited ways. The imperial court did not take full advantage of the capabilities of its civil servants.

It is not surprising that such reforms would lead to a twenty-five year spurt in economic growth (1890-1914). But this was command growth. It would have been surprising if the bureaucracy that ordained this spurt had lasted long enough to sustain it, however. Furthermore, the main goals of emancipation were not met. Peasant revolts and agricultural stagnation, capped by loss of a war to Japan, brought the government to the same awareness in 1905 as that of the tsar in the 1850s: the polity and economy were backward, compared with western Europe. The reaction was the Stolypin reform, by which farms were allocated in outright ownership to the peasants. This reform — once again by decree, without peasant participation — released the peasant from the commune and provided for private property, [36] but it was not until 1911 that the full legislation was in place. Delayed by surveys and questions of who would get what, the reform was implemented but slowly and died with World War I and the 1917 revolutions.

In assessing the Stolypin reform favorably, Klebnikov wrote in the context of reform in the 1990s:

The lesson of Stolypin's reforms is that given economic freedom, even backward peasants can become entrepreneurial and politically conservative. Simply put, privatization pays. But economic reform should be undertaken boldly: Vacillation leads to economic deterioration and political polarization. If he is serious about economic reform, Mr. Gorbachev needs a prime minister like Stolypin. [37]

But Klebnikov did not consider whether reform by decree rather than vertical negotiation today would once again contribute to the power ethos that destroyed the Stolypin reforms in a revolution.

The history of Soviet authoritarianism is well known: the forced collectivization of 1927 through 1930, the terror-famine, and the purges of the 1930s, in which millions died; [38] the successes of industry and agriculture during World War II; the problems of both industry and agriculture during the 1980s, which led to the virtual collapse of the economy in the 1990s and ultimately to the end of the Soviet Union.

In summary, this section has emphasized the continuity of Russian history. The authoritarian society of Ivan the Terrible led to the idea of reform from above, implemented by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I and II, Stolypin, Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, and now Yeltsin. Common to all these was and is domination by the elites, lack of pluralism and vertical negotiations, plus well-meaning foreign advisors who tried (and still try) to convert Russia into an image of themselves. Further historical references to the Russian authoritarian state are found in Appendix 14.2. References to the concentration of power are found in Appendix 14.3.

The Reforms of the 1990s

Pressed by the economic decline mentioned at the beginning of the preceding chapter, in the late 1980s the government of the Soviet Union proposed radical economic reforms from above, which — like the political switch — conformed to Western values. Western observers also urged bold, surgical moves. The following two quotations reflect the dominant Western theme:

Still, it is unlikely that dramatic improvements in economic performance will come through policy changes and partial reforms; therefore the ultimate logic of developments is on the side of a shift toward more radical reforms. [39]

Over the next few months one can hope to expect a flurry of decrees and draft laws that taken as a whole will resemble the plans that Mr. Abalkin [a cautious free-enterpriser] had rejected as too risky. [40]

Roberts stated the proposition more boldly: "Privatization, especially in the context of a system that is failing, cannot be done in piecemeal fashion." [41]

When Gorbachev visited Stanford University in 1990, he was greeted with a professor's ready-made plan for privatization, with the manner in which ownerships would be distributed spelled out in detail. [42] Angell, a Federal Reserve governor, declared that monetary reform is prerequisite to market reforms. He presented a further plan for the new currency of the Russian Republic in 1992. [43]

Feldstein outlined the essential elements of Soviet economic reform, again with detailed steps such as checking the disintegration of the market; ending the budget deficit; decontrolling prices; increasing the interest rate; and ending subsidies. [44] McKinnon agreed but placed tax and monetary reform in the key positions, without which none of the market reforms would be possible. [45]

The New York Times summarized the reforms proposed by American Sovietologists as price decontrol — "Markets can work only if prices reflect realistic value" — monetary reform — "Price decontrol can work only if excess rubles are eliminated" — and fiscal reform — "Monetary reform can work only if Government deficits are controlled." [46]

All these plans assume, without foundation, the existence of Western-style institutions, not just organizations. None of them analyzes how each provision might be distorted in ways familiar to Soviet society. For example, private monopolies would supplant public ones, vouchers might be distributed to friends, price control would become political and erratically enforced, and so on.

One might more likely expect that it would be citizens of Russia and the other republics rather than Westerners who would propose a set of reforms to be mandated by despots. Indeed they have been doing so. While Andrei Sakharov, celebrated Russian dissident, complained of the excess power granted to Gorbachev, [47] nevertheless in a speech before the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 he outlined a Decree on Power that could only be implemented by concentration of authority in the Congress. [48] Even Sakharov did not understand that democracy means dispersing power over various branches of government, not taking absolute rule from the executive in order to vest it in a Congress.

Former President Gorbachev also had his "total plan." At the end of 1989, he began announcing a radical, structural change: First was the relinquishment of some government controls. [49] Next, some private property ownership was permitted, along with the right to own small businesses. [50] After much criticism that these piecemeal changes were not enough, in September 1990 he and President Yeltsin of the Russian Republic announced a 500-day plan that would accomplish most of the reforms proposed by Western economists and even more, except that some price controls would remain. Exactly what would happen in the first 100 days, the next 150 days, the next 150 days, and the final 100 days was carefully spelled out. In fact, none of it occurred.

To implement the plan by decree, Gorbachev demanded and received virtually dictatorial powers from the legislature. But before the end of the year, his presidency, the legislature, and the government of the Soviet Union all had ceased to exist. Yeltsin proposed a similar plan for Russia in 1992, which was endorsed by the International Monetary Fund and seven Western nations, which promised to contribute a total of $24 billion in aid to the Russian Republic alone. [51] In 1993, they promised an immediate $3 billion. But promises are not contracts; in April 1994 the I.M.F. did vote $1.5 billion for Russia. [52]

Declarations that "all reforms must take place at once" reflect the ethnocentrism of Westerners who understand their own societies but who have forgotten their history. But that is not all. Evidence that Western governments do not understand Russian culture at its grass roots has also begun to surface. A poll of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1990 showed that 83% of collective farm workers opposed private property. [53] American economist Robert McIntyre has shown that the combination of private and collective farming in eastern Europe has been much more successful than Westerners acknowledge and is not easily given up. [54] In 1994, communist parties claimed a resurgence of adherents throughout Europe. If free-market reform is not what most Russians want, can it be imposed upon them?

The Twenty-First Century: A Possible Scenario

Time will not stop. So what would happen instead of liberal reforms? The following is one of many possible scenarios.

The central plan of Russia or any other republic will fail because the institutions to implement it cannot be put into place. The rulers cannot force all civil servants to banish corruption and privilege; they cannot force local governments to respect the free market; they cannot force bankers to make loans based on probability of profit rather than personal favoritism; they cannot force local elites to promote competition instead of monopoly; they cannot force businesspeople to cooperate in forming corporations for complex economic activity; they cannot force stock and bond issues to be honest; and most of all, they cannot force the governments of all regions of Russia to live in peace with each other — and even less so the other successor states. Too many whose cooperation would be essential would fail to execute this or that part of the plan. Thereafter, the economy would fail. Food would not be delivered to cities, the ruble would be worthless, barter would abound, thousands would starve, and ethnic groups would battle each other (as some are already doing). Foreign governments might intervene to alleviate the suffering, or stop the fighting, as best they could.

The closest historical precedent would be the fall of the Roman Empire. Strongmen would take over both factories and collective farms. The farms would continue as before but in a sort of manorial economy equivalent to the post-Roman. Political units different from the present ones might emerge. Peasants would commend themselves to protectors, possibly the same directors of collective farms, who would organize food production and create local currencies, possibly with their own promissory notes. The most crucial need would be for food distribution, so agriculture and transportation would assume top priority. City workers would flee to the country, at least until urban industry and services could be restored to employ them, and food distribution systems put into place.

Feudalism would not be repeated, however. The French longue durée of centuries would not be necessary. Entrepreneurial individuals would come out of the woodwork, seeing how to profit from whatever the circumstance. They would quickly form groups to build factories, or take over abandoned plants, and organize trade. Modern technology, always available, would be adopted as soon as the need for it was felt. Entrepreneurs would negotiate with the strongmen, both on the manors and in the cities, for protection and privilege, much as medieval bourgeoisie established towns. Since they would know about banking systems, they would form banks which, by agreement with each other, would develop exchange and transfer mechanisms. Local assemblies would sit, to work out rules of local government. Merchants would write and implement their own agreements, which would later be adopted as laws by local governments. Legal scholars would appear, and universities, not completely abandoned, would teach skills borrowed from the West. The local governments would issue new currencies to supplement the private issues of merchants and bankers.

Workers would bargain for wages. Although they would try to do so, strongmen would not be able to restrict labor mobility. Workers would move in ways the medieval serf could not, and wage labor would be quickly adopted. Unions would form, and contracts would be hammered out.

At every stage, the strongmen — mostly parasites — would try to suck the blood of new enterprises to their own benefit. Workers, peasants, and bourgeoisie who were adversely affected would either rebel against them or form unions or other syndicates to oppose them, sometimes forming vertical alliances with rival strongmen for leverage. In a few places, they might turn those strongmen into productive citizens, perhaps even entrepreneurs, like the samurai of Japan.

There is no reason immediately to expect a unified central government to emerge either in any republic or for a combination of republics. Most likely, local jurisdictions would join, ethnic groups with their kin, to form larger political aggregates. There would be wars over territorial boundaries.

It is not necessary to flesh out details. The ideas of the power-diffusion process have been expressed by example. But after an initial pessimism, this is an optimistic scenario. It is alternatively possible that centuries of bloodshed would elapse before a social consensus could be reached. Historical precedents exist for many scenarios, optimist and pessimist. But the central plan endorsed by seven industrial nations and the International Monetary Fund is not among them.

Notes