革命改革,胎死腹中的革命

IF 0.3 3区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1353/kri.2023.a910981
Michael David-Fox
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The most sustained is domestic high politics, and the treatment is notable for its unprecedented depth on Mikhail Gorbachev and the rival Boris Yeltsin \"team.\" The second, in keeping with Zubok's distinguished contributions to the history of Soviet foreign policy, is international diplomacy, with particular reference to the key factor of late Soviet interactions with the US superpower under US Secretary of State James Baker and President George H. W. Bush. The third is \"the decisive and implacable role\" (9) of economics and finance. This includes an account of the disastrous macroeconomic consequences of banking reform starting in 1987, which destabilized the unique Soviet system of beznal (cashless) accounting between the Soviet state and its enterprises. Fateful decisions and missteps in each of these areas by Gorbachev, the work's antihero, converged in what became the USSR's final death spiral. Zubok not only shows that the last Soviet leader was a true believer in his \"socialist choice,\" something that has been emphasized before. He demonstrates that Gorbachev's reform program was seriously, even bizarrely, formulated under the influence of Vladimir Lenin—or, more accurately, Gorbachev's own reading of the Bolshevik revolutionary. Lenin's influence can be boiled down to Gorbachev's admiration for Lenin's world-historical risk taking, encapsulated in the political credo of on s'engage, et puis on voit. In his 1923 \"On Revolution,\" Lenin translated Napoleon's aphorism as \"first [End Page 839] engage in a serious battle and then see what happens.\"1 Zubok's unforgettable portrait of the last Soviet leader paints Gorbachev as a \"bizarre political animal, who misunderstood power\" (210). In the study's tripartite focus and its explanation of Gorbachev, the narrative deploys the extensive use of interviews and about 50 published memoirs and diaries. Among many others, it weaves in the critical, not infrequently incredulous voice of Gorbachev's top foreign policy aide Anatolii Cherniaev. Both the painstakingly detailed chronological narrative and personal sources on the highest levels of decision making in Moscow bring us deep into the choices and calculations that informed the crucial turning points in perestroika's several stages. In other words, the entire organization of the book serves to emphasize the contingency of a converging series of gambles, missteps, and misunderstandings for which Gorbachev was responsible. The introduction, which in a fine-grained narrative history serves an outsized role in laying out the interpretive agenda, treats in succession the major factors that the existing literature has emphasized in explaining 1991, downplaying those Zubok does not consider causally decisive: first, the waning popular power of Soviet ideology; and second, the \"imperial\" or non-Russian national factor. In their place, Zubok puts forward a new variation on the \"great man\" theory of history. In a self-inflicted blow, Gorbachev radicalized what had been manageable vulnerabilities into an insurmountable set of catastrophes. The corollary to this is the controversial thesis that as late as 1990 the USSR might have been preserved. I have used the term \"radicalized\" deliberately, because in the study Gorbachev's agenda and, at times, the outcome that ended in state dissolution is portrayed as \"revolutionary.\" In sum, the book's depth and its fantastic new material both serve its provocative case for contingency. But does Zubok portray the trees with such vivid, fine-grained detail that he has obscured the forest? The relationship between structure and agency is the theoretical point of entry into the modern human sciences writ large. Any approach to it will be implicit in a work of narrative history. It is also inherently interpretive—it can never be simply proven right or wrong. 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Fateful decisions and missteps in each of these areas by Gorbachev, the work's antihero, converged in what became the USSR's final death spiral. Zubok not only shows that the last Soviet leader was a true believer in his \\\"socialist choice,\\\" something that has been emphasized before. He demonstrates that Gorbachev's reform program was seriously, even bizarrely, formulated under the influence of Vladimir Lenin—or, more accurately, Gorbachev's own reading of the Bolshevik revolutionary. Lenin's influence can be boiled down to Gorbachev's admiration for Lenin's world-historical risk taking, encapsulated in the political credo of on s'engage, et puis on voit. In his 1923 \\\"On Revolution,\\\" Lenin translated Napoleon's aphorism as \\\"first [End Page 839] engage in a serious battle and then see what happens.\\\"1 Zubok's unforgettable portrait of the last Soviet leader paints Gorbachev as a \\\"bizarre political animal, who misunderstood power\\\" (210). In the study's tripartite focus and its explanation of Gorbachev, the narrative deploys the extensive use of interviews and about 50 published memoirs and diaries. Among many others, it weaves in the critical, not infrequently incredulous voice of Gorbachev's top foreign policy aide Anatolii Cherniaev. Both the painstakingly detailed chronological narrative and personal sources on the highest levels of decision making in Moscow bring us deep into the choices and calculations that informed the crucial turning points in perestroika's several stages. In other words, the entire organization of the book serves to emphasize the contingency of a converging series of gambles, missteps, and misunderstandings for which Gorbachev was responsible. The introduction, which in a fine-grained narrative history serves an outsized role in laying out the interpretive agenda, treats in succession the major factors that the existing literature has emphasized in explaining 1991, downplaying those Zubok does not consider causally decisive: first, the waning popular power of Soviet ideology; and second, the \\\"imperial\\\" or non-Russian national factor. In their place, Zubok puts forward a new variation on the \\\"great man\\\" theory of history. In a self-inflicted blow, Gorbachev radicalized what had been manageable vulnerabilities into an insurmountable set of catastrophes. The corollary to this is the controversial thesis that as late as 1990 the USSR might have been preserved. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

革命改革,死产革命迈克尔·大卫-福克斯(传记)弗拉迪斯拉夫·m·祖博克,《崩溃:苏联的垮台》。Xv + 576页,插图。、地图。纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2021。ISBN-13 978-0300257304, $35.00(布)。ISBN-13 978-0300268171,纸质版25美元。弗拉季斯拉夫·祖博克的《解体》为理解和辩论1991年苏联解体树立了新的标准。这本书以前所未有的丰富和详细的政治决策叙述的形式,重点关注三个主要领域。最持久的是国内高层政治,值得注意的是它对米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫和对手鲍里斯·叶利钦“团队”的前所未有的深度。第二,与祖博克对苏联外交政策历史的杰出贡献相一致的是,国际外交,特别是在美国国务卿詹姆斯·贝克和总统乔治·h·w·布什领导下的苏联与美国超级大国后期互动的关键因素。第三是经济和金融的“决定性和不可动摇的作用”(9)。这包括对1987年开始的银行改革的灾难性宏观经济后果的描述,这一改革破坏了苏联国家和企业之间独特的无现金会计制度的稳定。作为这部作品的反英雄人物,戈尔巴乔夫在这些领域做出的重大决定和失误,最终导致了苏联的死亡螺旋。祖博克不仅展示了这位前苏联领导人是他的“社会主义选择”的真正信徒,这一点之前已经被强调过。他证明戈尔巴乔夫的改革计划是在弗拉基米尔·列宁的影响下制定的,或者更准确地说,是戈尔巴乔夫自己对布尔什维克革命的解读。列宁的影响可以归结为戈尔巴乔夫对列宁的世界历史冒险精神的钦佩,这体现在“不参与,不投票”的政治信条中。在1923年出版的《论革命》(On Revolution)一书中,列宁将拿破仑的格言翻译为:“首先(End Page 839)投入一场严肃的战斗,然后看看会发生什么。”祖博克对最后一位苏联领导人的描绘令人难忘,他把戈尔巴乔夫描绘成一个“误解权力的奇怪的政治动物”(210页)。在研究的三方关注和对戈尔巴乔夫的解释中,叙述广泛使用了采访和大约50本已出版的回忆录和日记。其中,戈尔巴乔夫的高级外交政策助手阿纳托利·切尔尼亚耶夫(Anatolii Cherniaev)的批评性、常常是怀疑的声音交织在一起。本书煞费苦心地按时间顺序详细叙述了莫斯科最高层的决策过程,并提供了个人资料,使我们深入了解了在改革的几个阶段中决定关键转折点的选择和计算。换句话说,这本书的整个组织都是为了强调戈尔巴乔夫应该负责的一系列赌博、失误和误解的偶然性。序言部分是一部细致入微的叙事性历史,在安排解释性议程方面发挥了巨大的作用,它依次论述了现有文献在解释1991年事件时强调的主要因素,淡化了祖博克认为没有因果关系的决定性因素:首先,苏联意识形态的民众力量正在减弱;第二,“帝国”或非俄罗斯民族因素。在他们的位置上,祖博克提出了一种新的“伟人”历史理论的变体。在一次自我造成的打击中,戈尔巴乔夫把原本可以控制的弱点激进化,变成了一系列无法克服的灾难。由此推论出一个有争议的论点,即直到1990年苏联可能还被保存了下来。我故意使用了“激进化”这个词,因为在研究中,戈尔巴乔夫的议程,以及有时以国家解体告终的结果,被描绘成“革命性的”。总而言之,这本书的深度和奇妙的新材料都为偶然性提供了令人振奋的论据。但祖博克是否用如此生动、细腻的细节描绘了这些树木,以至于遮蔽了整个森林?结构与能动性之间的关系是现代人文科学的理论切入点。任何关于它的方法都将隐含在叙事性历史的作品中。它也具有内在的解释性——它永远不能简单地证明是对还是错。同时,很有可能……
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Revolutionary Reform, Stillborn Revolution
Revolutionary Reform, Stillborn Revolution Michael David-Fox (bio) Vladislav M. Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. xv + 576 pp., illus., maps. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. ISBN-13 978-0300257304, $35.00 (cloth). ISBN-13 978-0300268171, $25 (paper). Vladislav Zubok's Collapse sets a new standard for understanding and debating the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book takes the form of an unprecedentedly rich and detailed narrative of political decision making, with a focus on three major areas. The most sustained is domestic high politics, and the treatment is notable for its unprecedented depth on Mikhail Gorbachev and the rival Boris Yeltsin "team." The second, in keeping with Zubok's distinguished contributions to the history of Soviet foreign policy, is international diplomacy, with particular reference to the key factor of late Soviet interactions with the US superpower under US Secretary of State James Baker and President George H. W. Bush. The third is "the decisive and implacable role" (9) of economics and finance. This includes an account of the disastrous macroeconomic consequences of banking reform starting in 1987, which destabilized the unique Soviet system of beznal (cashless) accounting between the Soviet state and its enterprises. Fateful decisions and missteps in each of these areas by Gorbachev, the work's antihero, converged in what became the USSR's final death spiral. Zubok not only shows that the last Soviet leader was a true believer in his "socialist choice," something that has been emphasized before. He demonstrates that Gorbachev's reform program was seriously, even bizarrely, formulated under the influence of Vladimir Lenin—or, more accurately, Gorbachev's own reading of the Bolshevik revolutionary. Lenin's influence can be boiled down to Gorbachev's admiration for Lenin's world-historical risk taking, encapsulated in the political credo of on s'engage, et puis on voit. In his 1923 "On Revolution," Lenin translated Napoleon's aphorism as "first [End Page 839] engage in a serious battle and then see what happens."1 Zubok's unforgettable portrait of the last Soviet leader paints Gorbachev as a "bizarre political animal, who misunderstood power" (210). In the study's tripartite focus and its explanation of Gorbachev, the narrative deploys the extensive use of interviews and about 50 published memoirs and diaries. Among many others, it weaves in the critical, not infrequently incredulous voice of Gorbachev's top foreign policy aide Anatolii Cherniaev. Both the painstakingly detailed chronological narrative and personal sources on the highest levels of decision making in Moscow bring us deep into the choices and calculations that informed the crucial turning points in perestroika's several stages. In other words, the entire organization of the book serves to emphasize the contingency of a converging series of gambles, missteps, and misunderstandings for which Gorbachev was responsible. The introduction, which in a fine-grained narrative history serves an outsized role in laying out the interpretive agenda, treats in succession the major factors that the existing literature has emphasized in explaining 1991, downplaying those Zubok does not consider causally decisive: first, the waning popular power of Soviet ideology; and second, the "imperial" or non-Russian national factor. In their place, Zubok puts forward a new variation on the "great man" theory of history. In a self-inflicted blow, Gorbachev radicalized what had been manageable vulnerabilities into an insurmountable set of catastrophes. The corollary to this is the controversial thesis that as late as 1990 the USSR might have been preserved. I have used the term "radicalized" deliberately, because in the study Gorbachev's agenda and, at times, the outcome that ended in state dissolution is portrayed as "revolutionary." In sum, the book's depth and its fantastic new material both serve its provocative case for contingency. But does Zubok portray the trees with such vivid, fine-grained detail that he has obscured the forest? The relationship between structure and agency is the theoretical point of entry into the modern human sciences writ large. Any approach to it will be implicit in a work of narrative history. It is also inherently interpretive—it can never be simply proven right or wrong. At the same time, it is more than plausible to...
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.60
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0.00%
发文量
51
期刊介绍: A leading journal of Russian and Eurasian history and culture, Kritika is dedicated to internationalizing the field and making it relevant to a broad interdisciplinary audience. The journal regularly publishes forums, discussions, and special issues; it regularly translates important works by Russian and European scholars into English; and it publishes in every issue in-depth, lengthy review articles, review essays, and reviews of Russian, Eurasian, and European works that are rarely, if ever, reviewed in North American Russian studies journals.
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