From Tsars to Commissars:
FREIDBERG, MAURICE
WRITERS and WRITING From Tsars to Commissars The Transformation of Russian Society. Edited by Cyril E. Black. Harvard. 695 pp. $9.75. Reviewed by Maurice Friedberg Assistant Professor of...
...Other informative studies are Lazar Volin's essay on the peasantry, Mark G. Field's on the medical profession and Bernice Madison's on the welfare services...
...Thus, in reading John S. Curtiss' essay, one wonders to what extent the decline in church attendance is to be ascribed to "modernization" as, say, in England or Sweden, and how much of it is due to Communist hostility to religion...
...My favorite quotation is contained in Professor Black's concluding essay: "Russia is on a sure, steady career of progress and reform...
...Russia's industrialization, first of all, has resulted in a mass migration from the village to the city...
...The continuity of pre-revolutionary and Soviet economic development is demonstrated by Alexander Gerschenkron: "As so often before, Russia's industrialization in the Soviet period was a function of the country's foreign and military policies...
...For some time now scholars in the West have concerned themselves with this problem by examining the phenomena of Soviet life against the background of pre-revolutionary Russia...
...would similarly have been desirable...
...As a result, the book contains no contributions on such important topics as the national minorities, culture and the arts...
...The materials studied by the volume's 38 contributors include much that is rarely probed by Soviet researchers...
...There are, however, two major shortcomings...
...No doubt, many will disagree with Henry V. Dick's "Some Notes on the Russian National Character...
...Ideology rather than technology appears as the dominant factor in Zbigniew K. Brzezinski's "Patterns of Autocracy...
...and Allen Kassof which, while interesting, do not properly fall within its projected scope, since they are limited to Soviet developments and thus shed little light on the impact of modernization per se...
...The parallels with Russia would be more apt than with the countries of the West not only because of the factors of state planning, but also because of Russia's exceptionally rapid tempo of modernization which many of the new nations now seek to imitate...
...Nicholas I sought no praise from his subjects, since, in his view, praise constituted a form of judgment...
...One misses some observations on whether the modernization of an agrarian society necessarily results in linguistic assimilation of minorities, or perhaps brings new vitality to latent nationalism...
...The aim has been to determine the degree of "continuity and change in Russian and Soviet thought...
...With the new provincial bodies, and the spread of common schools and newspapers (of which Ave hear such encouraging accounts!, she will soon educate a mass of intelligent and orderly citizens who will be fully capable of governing themselves...
...A n interesting article, which in many ways complements Brzezinski's, is Sydney Monas' study of the political police...
...The latter could have been improved by additional research on the present role of the Young Communist League and factory collectives in providing such services...
...The volume contains an enormous amount of valuable information, some of it new even to the specialist, and a wealth of penetrating analysis...
...much is also open to question in Vera Sandomirsky Dunham's thoroughly documented study of "The Strong Woman Motif" in Russian literature, both pre-revolutionary and Soviet...
...Reviewed by Maurice Friedberg Assistant Professor of Russian, Hunter College To WHAT DEGREE are the features of Russian ideology and practice peculiar to the Soviet state...
...The first could perhaps have been avoided had articles been commissioned instead of selecting them from "research already completed or in progress...
...March 9, 1865...
...The book's second weakness— probably unavoidable—is the occasional blurring of distinction between processes that were the result of industrialization and urbanization and those caused by ideologically motivated actions of the Soviet authorities...
...Alexander Vicinich's essay describes the growth of local government in Imperial Russia: "In the Soviet Union there are no areas of independent associative life...
...The industrialization of Russia begins, properly speaking, exactly a century ago, and the present selection of essays examines events since 1861, the year Russia liberated its serfs...
...The New York Times...
...the Emperor merely demanded obedience...
...rigid ideological premises have brought about a heavy emphasis on the latter in the USSR...
...Tsarist Russia lacked any consistent ideology, fluctuating between concessions and repressive measures...
...Both before and after the Revolution, "the population failed to derive any perceptible advantages from the long period of industrialization...
...Then, too, The Transformation of Russian Society includes essays by Ralph Fisher Jr...
...The impact of urbanization and industrial growth on various aspects of the country's life is examined in thirty-seven contributions grouped into seven parts: "Society and Change," "Law, Politics and Social Change," "Social Stratification," "Education, Scholarship, and Religion," "Family, Youth and Human Welfare" and "Personal and Social Values...
...Warren W. Eason points out that, while at present Russia's population is almost 50 per cent urban, the USSR is still less urbanized than the United States, Australia, West Germany and Argentina...
...In the Tsarist system there were such areas...
...some information on prerevolutionary welfare organizations run by the non-Orthodox religious bodies (Jews, Quakers, etc...
...The introductory and concluding essays were written by Cyril E. Black of Princeton...
...A volume of essays bearing this title was brought out in 1955 by Harvard University Press...
...This approach may permit us to foresee certain patterns in the development of a number of economically underdeveloped Asian and African countries...
...In the USSR, praise is demanded and no other form of judgment is permitted, thus providing an interesting contrast between autocracy and totalitarianism...
...John N. Hazard's article on "The Courts and the Legal System" devotes much attention to the elements of pre-revolutionary law still found in the Soviet codes, though Hazard notes that, unlike Imperial Russia, law in the USSR is expected to play an active part in strengthening the political system...
...Similarly, an appraisal of the role of culture ("elite" or "mass") would have enhanced the book's value...
...Source...
...The present work treats the same problem from a different perspective: how much of Russian theory and practice is purely Soviet, and how much is characteristic of any agrarian society undergoing industrialization...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 12
