Reviews of Books
932
group of the liberation movement. Its program was a
literal interpretation of Solov'ev's view that Christian
ideals should guide not only individual conduct but
social and political life as well; hence its religious
justification was a sort of theology of liberation. As a
political movement, it proved to be a failure, but it
nevertheless exercised a lasting influence on the progressive part of the Orthodox clergy.
The culmination of Bulgakov's efforts to modernize
the church and, at the same time, to strengthen its
position in the state, was his central role at the Church
Council of 1917-1918. The three chapters devoted to
this are very informative and thought-provoking. Evtuhov demonstrates that the Council's official acceptance of the idea of sobornost' had a double significance: on the one hand, it was a long step toward
ecclesiological democracy, but, on the other, it was
also an attempt to create a confessional state, unacceptable to the victorious Bolshevik Party and, of
course, to the religious minorities in Russia.
Evtuhov's analysis of Bulgakov's philosophy concentrates mostly on his Philosophy of Economy (Filosofiia
Khoziaistva [1912]). It views Bulgakov's "sophic economy" as an interesting variant of "epistemological
collectivism," trying to overcome the antinomies of the
"epistemological individualism" of Immanuel Kant; as
an activistic philosophy of labor, parallel in certain
respects to the neo-Marxist philosophies of praxis;
and, finally, as a religious philosophy, developing the
conception of the Divine Wisdom (Sophia), of its
immanent presence in the world, and of its progressive
revelation in human creativity.
The book is not flawless. It does not offer a systematic analysis of different stages of Bulgakov's philosophical and political evolution. It occasionally indulges in controversial interpretations (for example,
interpreting Bulgakov's "sophic" economy as a response to P. A. Stolypin's agrarian reform). Its subtitle
is somewhat misleading, because the book deals, in
fact, with the fate of an individual thinker only.
Nevertheless, Evtuhov has made a valuable and rewarding contribution to the important and neglected
field of Russian studies. She avoids the pitfalls of an
exaggerated Russian "exceptionalism" by pointing out
that Russian philosophy of the Silver Age was a part of
an all-European revolt against positivism. Her book
compares favorably with the chapters on Bulgakov in
George F. Putnam's Russian Alternatives to Marxism
(1977). And, be it added, a comparable monograph on
Bulgakov has not yet appeared in Russia.
ANDRZEJ WALICKI
University of Notre Dame
DAVID R. SHEARER. Industry, State, and Society in
Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1996. Pp. xiv, 263. Cloth $42.50, paper
$18.95.
For scholars of Soviet history, no question has loomed
larger than that of Stalinism. How was it that the
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
October Revolution, which seemed to promise equality and liberty, resulted not in a Communist utopia but
instead in a Stalinist dictatorship? Why did the Communist Party abandon a gradualist approach to building socialism and embark on a highly coercive industrialization drive in the late 1920s? And what was the
nature of the Stalinist system that resulted? Historians
have sought the origins of Stalinism in a number of
sources; some have focused on the role of Marxist
ideology, others have blamed Stalin personally, and
still others have emphasized the backwardness of
Russian society or the hostile international environment. David R. Shearer has chosen to concentrate on
bureaucratic politics within the state economic administration in his attempt to understand the genesis of
the Stalinist system.
Shearer points out that the key question facing
Soviet leaders, once they resolved to industrialize the
country quickly, was how to generate enough capital
for investment. The method they ultimately chose was
that of capital extraction through high taxation, coercion, and a hypercentralized state bureaucracy. But
Shearer sees another possibility: a state-run economy
based on commercial relations between state production cartels that would have constituted "a new kind of
market socialist economy" (p. 240). In particular,
Shearer champions the syndicates (sale and supply
offices of state producers) as trade organizations that,
had they not been abolished in 1929, would have
promoted the commercial exchange of goods and
materials within state industry.
Shearer's argument owes something to previous
attempts to find a non-capitalist alternative to Stalinism. Some historians have contended that the New
Economic Policy (NEP), the mixed economy of the
1920s that permitted limited private enterprise, offered a market road to socialism. But the NEP had
many detractors, both within the Communist Party and
in Soviet society as a whole, and it did not promise the
rapid industrialization deemed necessary to defend the
country. Shearer proposes a different alternative to
Stalinism, in this case a system that would have
incorporated some market mechanisms, but within the
rubric of a fully state-run economy that allegedly
would still have accomplished rapid industrialization.
Why then was this nascent market socialist economy" scrapped in favor of a hypercentralized command economy? According to Shearer, the leaders of
one branch of the Soviet bureaucracy, the Workers'
and Peasants' Inspectorate, were bent not only on the
industrialization of Russia but on the creation of an
administrative dictatorship as well. In a welcome departure from much scholarship on this period, Shearer
does not fixate on Stalin himself as the sole creator of
the command economy, and instead describes the
attitudes of several other high Soviet officials such as
Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Georgii Piatakov. But in the
end, his explanation is only marginally more sophisticated than accounts that attribute everything to Stalin
personally, because he repeatedly invokes this handful
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1998
Modem Europe
of "Stalinists" to explain the creation of the Stalinist
system.
It is unfortunate that Shearer did not place more
emphasis on his point that certain technical elites (not
to mention military officers, industrial workers, and
Soviet youth) also favored the state mobilization of
resources for economic modernization. Indeed, the
idea of the command economy reflected much deeper
sentiments in Soviet society and in Europe as a whole
concerning the transformative power of technocratic
state management of people and resources. From the
late nineteenth century, and especially during and
after World War I, governments throughout Europe
began to intervene in their economies and societies to
augment economic and military power. It was the
German wartime economy that provided the initial
model for the Stalinist command economy.
In the last third of the book, Shearer describes the
operation of the Soviet economy in the early 1930s. As
other scholars have also pointed out, the rush to
industrialize resulted in enormous chaos and waste.
The Communist Party had to dispatch high-level plenipotentiaries to key industrial regions to combat widespread supply bottlenecks and production crises. The
so-called planned economy was, as Shearer states,
"more spontaneous than planned" (p. 205).
This book is recommended for specialists only.
Shearer's relatively narrow focus on state economic
administration renders it largely inaccessible to general readers. His intricate descriptions of the Soviet
bureaucracy and his painstaking recounting of managerial conferences would prove too dry for either an
undergraduate survey course or a graduate seminar.
For scholars of Soviet bureaucratic politics, however,
Shearer has done very valuable research.
DAVID L. HOFFMANN
Ohio State University
LYNNE VIOLA. Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York:
Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 312. $49.95.
Scholars have long maintained that peasants opposed
but did not actively resist the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR. Lynne Viola questions this
conventional wisdom in a pioneering but convincing
study based on recently declassified Soviet archives.
Viola demonstrates that collectivization was not passively accepted but instigated widespread agrarian
unrest of a magnitude comparable to the great peasant
revolts of the Russian past.
Viola argues that these protests, disorders, insurrections, acts of terrorism, and other types of rural
resistance to collectivization were rooted in the same
"culture of peasant resistance" that gave rise to earlier
revolts in Russia. She views collectivization as not
merely an economically motivated "struggle for grain"
but as the clash of two very different and essentially
alien cultures that unleashed an often violent civil war
between state and peasants, town and countryside. The
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933
front lines of this struggle ran down the main street of
every village. Viola attempts to study this unknown
civil war by analyzing the aims and activities of the
many peasants who revolted against state-imposed
collectivization and dekulakization in defense of their
culture and way of life. Much of the text focuses on the
opening months of 1930, when forced collectivization,
peasant resistance, and agrarian disorders peaked, and
the state, shaken by revolts, beat a hasty retreat in the
form of Joseph Stalin's well-known article, "Dizzy
from Success." A significant drop in the collectivization rate ensued. In the end, however, the peasant
revolt (or civil war) of the collectivization period
ended, as peasant rebellions normally have throughout
history, in a defeat that enhanced the power of the
state and increased the level of repression. Yet, according to Viola, the victory of the state did not
endure. Subsequent passive, "everyday" peasant resistance undermined the economic viability of the collective farm system and contributed ultimately to the
demise of communism, since collective farming remained the Achilles heel of the Soviet system.
Viola analyzes the various forms that peasant unrest
took at the time of collectivization. She begins with a
discussion of apocalyptic rumors, efforts by peasants to
write and petition the authorities, peasant protests
against state policies in public meetings, attempts by
peasants to escape kulak status through various strategies (such as self-dekulakization, family divisions,
flight to the cities, and the selling off or destruction of
peasant property), denials by fellow villagers that local
kulaks existed, and defense of kulaks by their neighbors. The book goes on to explore the more active and
radical forms of unrest, such as brigandage and the
murders, beatings, threats, and arson directed against
peasant activists and officials who broke ranks with
their communities and sided with the state. This study
pays considerable attention to the most radical forms
of peasant protest, which proved the most threatening
to the state. These were mass disorders in the form of
protests, demonstrations, and occasionally outright
insurrections in which Soviet power was temporarily
overthrown in particular localities and replaced by new
representative bodies selected by the rebels. A chapter
is devoted to "women's riots" (i.e., agrarian disorders
led by or comprised predominantly of women), which
composed a significant proportion of the rebellions in
1929 and 1930. Throughout this work, Viola frequently
points out gender-related differences in peasant political behavior and seeks to account for the prominent
role played by women in the collectivization protests.
Indeed, the author's handling of gender differences in
the peasant protests during collectivization is one of
the most interesting aspects of this valuable, pioneering study.
Viola maintains, on the basis of police statistics, that
the peasant unrest of this time was only rarely put
down by armed force. Rather, repression in the form
of repeated waves of dekulakization that deprived the
village of leadership and "the economy of scarcity,"
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