RESPONSES TO "LENIN NYET!"-1

...Although Andrei Amalrik predicted the USSR's disintegration and the resultant internal anarchy in Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, his pessimistic image of the masses, so common among the Russian intelligentsia, was off the mark...

...Freedomand democracy incited the resentments piled up against the unifying civic discipline forcibly imposed on Eurasia by Tsars and soviets...

...What are the issues...

...For my overall impression was that your commentators proceeded from limited American sensibilities developed under highly exceptional conditions that allow no perception of the sociopolitical dynamics at work in the open vastnesses of Eurasia...

...Why did a system that seemed quite solid to some deteriorate...

...There are many people in the former USSR who still argue that Stalin's era was an "ideal time...

...Alexander Dallin aptly titles his essay "Gorbachev: A Premature Postmortem...

...The West can and should act to mitigate the worst of the hardships that are now in prospect in the USSR...

...Shub's affectionate memoir of his father is indeed poignant...

...Vilnius of January 1991 was a model and a teacher for Moscow in August...

...At the end of that War the Russian Empire faced annihilation...

...Frankly, I ache to look at the mess the divided Soviet Union is in now—and at the pain, suffering, loss, and waste that Soviet Communists inflicted on their countrymen and many others...

...I am glad I proved to be wrong about that...

...First, while the coup failed—critically, on a Moscowstagecaughtinthecameras of CNN et al.—the attempt itself was a Larry, Curly and Moe production...

...Despite past shortcomings, Western specialists are likely to be more detached at present than their Russian and East-Central European colleagues, of whom many have a vested interest in exaggerating the role of conscious political opposition and downplaying the significance of the Communist reformers as well as others who tried to change the system from within...

...There is a nice anti-deterministic ring to the transition...

...And there are many, many more who express themselves about the Stalin period in much the same way that Polovtsov did about the days of Nicholas I, except that some use stronger language and speak of themselves as having served as harlots under the Soviet dictator...

...Multum in parvo...

...I came to Soviet affairs as a Columbia graduate student in the late 1950s...

...Atthemoment, the planned economies of yesterday are grabbing everyone's attention: Experts, nonexperts and instant experts are offering advice on the best way to introduce markets...

...It would have been something of agrimjokeif the future of a failed revolution that claimed in its day to speak for History had immediately been ordained...

...Have we seen an end to plotting...

...By the summer of 1991 observers, fascinated at seeing the Great Gorbini escape every knotty situation, failed to recognize that his stage was shrinking...

...I did not believe in the viability of Communism...

...He then used it to ridicule the "lies of Citizen [Aleksandr] Herzen," and the fantasies of Mikhail Bakunin, who were arguing that the Russian muzhik was better off than the worker under capitalism, bereft of communal protections and left to the untender mercies of the free labor market...

...Finally, a demurrer on Shleifer's title, "Make the Bear Dance," and his repeated references to it...

...Stalin?] plus Russian backwardness" may have played a role in shaping Soviet Communism, Daniels cannot escape the fact that, on the whole, it derived from the Utopian ideas of Marx, who certainly held the door open for a totalitarian use of his legacy...

...Thus neither side was willing to see that the Soviet system was in fact weakening, losing control...

...Once the reforms began, many asserted that they would merely be cosmetic...

...The system known as Communism broke down because its command-administrative economy could only function under totalitarianism—that is, in a phase of total ideological mobilization that resorted to physical terror but also drew strength from relatively wide popular support...

...Neither the political nor economic paths ahead are rosy prospects...

...Gorbachev's problem was the strength of those demands—exceeding his own expectations—from important, if not majority segments of the population once he lifted the lid...

...Marian J. Rubchak Assistant Professor of History, Valparaiso University Andrei Shleifer makes one of the most reasoned and compelling arguments for aiding individual Soviet republics, rather than the central government in Moscow, that I have had the pleasure to read to date...

...great Russian chauvinism...

...And those processes should be studied in all their complexities, with greater emphasis on their progressive stages than on the so-called "August Revolution...

...Toynbee corrected Spengler's nearsightedness, pointing out that all civilizations areboth"apparented" and "alliliated"—have a parentage and bequeath an heir...

...While reading Publius' "Open Letter to Mikhail and Boris," it occurred to me that his advice—particularly about the importance of compromise—might well apply to his own countrymen...

...Their gripe was that, as Leonid I. Brezhnev's stagnation deepened, the compact no longer delivered what it promised...

...Yeltsin pilloried as a bumbling populist dictator-in-waiting...

...This would be compatible with the republics choosing their own pace to privatize farms and factories, to invite foreign investment and to carry out price reform in an atmosphere of free trade with one another...

...The agents available for that experiment, conducted under the threat of political extinction, were inevitably very "Russian": Stalin and the wolftribe described by Solzhenitsyn...

...Some would have us believe this experiment is doomed to failure...

...In my view the obituary of Soviet Communism was premature, and therefore speculation on the demise of Sovietology was premature as well...

...Many of them have national histories much older than Russia's, to say nothing of the USSR...

...It is possible that another attempt to seize the reins of Soviet power and reverse Gorbachev's policies will succeed...

...True economic leadership, not authoritarian command, "willmakethetrainsrunon time...

...How could so many have been so wrong so often...

...In Soviet circumstances, though, with the economy out of control and power seemingly often up for grabs, the notably insecure political authorities, bothrepublican and central, are understandably hesitant to try to impose even a much modulated version of Polish "shock therapy...

...But no amount of satisfaction that their destiny is now in their own hands can erase or mitigate the toll exacted by the doctrine they are now shaking off...

...One final note: Sovietology may not be dead yet, but it will live only as long as the Soviet Union does—that is, not very long...

...Demagogues have tried, of late, to play to this confusion...

...At least I hope there is still deference to him on foreign policy issues like the Middle East peace process...

...Soviet Communism has indeed been wounded, perhaps mortally...

...But don't forget—they have been wrong before...

...In city after city, meetings and demonstrations denounced the General's attempt to restore order to the Army and the home front by suppressing soviet democracy and imposing martial law...

...I thought Robert Conquest's obituary was a bit flippant...

...I kept that faith over the years, with admittedly diminishing conviction...

...Richard D. King Assistant Professor of History, Ursinus College While I agree that the prospects for democratization in Russia are more favorable than ever before, I still think it necessary to sound a cautionary note...

...Yeltsin, one hopes, is not Juan Perón...

...The key to the Soviet experiment was expressed by Lenin: "What is to a great extent automatic in a politically free country must in Russia be done deliberately and systematically by our organizations...

...This is history's answer—the answer of the very Clio to whom Lenin thought himself, at Smolny, wedded forevermore...

...Rather, it was a convulsive devolution of power from Communists to former Communists, a process that is not likely to stop until power devolves all the way down to the people...

...Publius is wise to advise that patience and compromise are critical for the creation of a new multinational country...

...will not be like Denmark, but, asKenez notes, the population that does not want a return to the past is "reasonably well-educated and eager for political liberties...

...It will take uncommon bravery and imagination by some Soviet citizens and stoic patience by many others to move from a revolution that failed to a postrevolutionary prospect with even a faint chance of success...

...That, to borrow from Andrei Shleifer, could "hardly contribute to gradually democratizing Soviet society...

...He helped to make the Soviet Union into a superpower, endowing it with unprecedented external security...

...By using it so indiscriminately, the author appears to be equating "Russian" with "Soviet...

...Not to worry: Russology, as well as Baltic, Central Asian and Caucasian studies are waiting in the wings as the legitimate heirs to a very mixed sovietological legacy...

...He is correct, though, in pointing out that even under Stalin totalitarianism was never as efficient as its practitioners would have us believe...

...During Stalin's rule, as Isaac Deutscher noted in The Prophet Outcast (1963), the bureaucratic and managerial cadres were kept "in a state of flux," and were never allowed "to form a compact and articulate body with a sociopolitical identity of its own...

...The prospect of a restoration of the old guard galvanized resistance to the coup in Moscow and other major cities...

...But efficient enough, as Conquest's work and recent new revelations on Stalin's murders make all too clear...

...Roger Hamburg Professor of Political Science, Indiana University at South Bend I was impressed by the depth and breadth of the articles in "Lenin Nyet...

...Butto return to Conquest, Soviet readers impressed by his matter-of-fact treatment of the Purges (or Sergei Kirov's murder) would be amazed at how the poet in him can wax lyrical...

...It is not inconceivable that Communists could return to power, legally or by force, and reduce Gorbachevshchina to a historical footnote in the long-running tragedy of Russia's search for democracy...

...Perhaps no coup could succeed...

...In the realm of comparative economic systems à la Abram Bergson, theory interacted with facts...

...One wonders what was going through the minds of those 9 million people, minus perhaps 10,000, during the fateful August coup...

...I see little evidence of such understanding in the pieces you have published, and even less in the analyses by the run of Russian intellectuals...

...When that stage collapsed in August, his Gorbpsichorean talents became irrelevant...

...This is reminiscent of the way many Russians reacted to Bervi-Flerovsky's masterpiece, The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, when it appeared in 1869...

...Theodore H. Von Laue Professor of History, Clark University The Special Issue presented a stimulating set of reactions to the failed Moscow coup and its aftermath...

...He is also right, I think, to stress the need for dealing directly with the Soviet republics, though it is too early to write off the central authorities completely...

...Anatole Shub recalls Papa David's message, based on his moral conviction and cultural self-assurance, that Communism would fail...

...When the coup occurred, a restoration of Russian absolutism seemed imminent...

...The roots of a civic culture have taken hold in Russian soil...

...But as Robert Daniels pointed out, the sufferers of Communism must all come to grips with their Soviet past, not ignore it, lest they create "blank spots" that could become black holes...

...Indeed, Russian and East European anti-Communists tend to attribute the overthrow of their respective regimes to oppositional activities, rather than to the rottenness and objective contradictions of "actually existing socialism...

...The radical members of the second boldly claimed that the very notion of "Communist totalitarianism" was merely an invention of Cold War ideologists, and that the countries of the Soviet bloc were undergoing an evolutionary development in the desirable direction of democratic socialism...

...The West also can and should be prepared to offer aid to promote programs for liberalizing the Soviet economy...

...N. I. Richmond Assistant Professor of Political Science, Utica College of Syracuse University In your Special Issue Robert Conquest announced the September 5 death of Soviet Communism...

...I am aware of the current interdependence of the republican economies, but I would argue that we have to abandon the notion of a Soviet economy and concentrate instead on establishing a network of voluntary agreements among the newly sovereign states...

...Seventy-four years ago, the Russian Empire was locked in a devastating war with a powerful invader bent on pushing back its frontiers and destroying its military might...

...Apart from the fact that for all intents and purposes a power vacuum now exists in the dissolving USSR, the central government has already demonstrated its incompetence and there is no indication that competence is even a possibility...

...The silent majority (less than 1 per centofMoscowcameto Yeltsin's aid in August) will follow whoever can provide basic necessities and a glimmer of hope for a better future...

...Small wonder that several years later a significant part of the Soviet nomenklatura started to seek salvation —for themselves and for their country— in agradual, controlled liquidation of the system...

...When his rule was over, Aleksandr Nikitenko, one of his censors, wrote: "The chief shortcoming of the reign of Nicholas Alexandrovich was that it was all a mistake...

...Soviet democrats are said to be studying the American historical experience and our constitutional theory...

...Conquest does not so much as hint at this...

...But what about economists...

...Nostalgia for the old arrangement complicates any positive redefinition of competition, enterprise, inequality as "justice...

...Petersburg, the democrats are drowning in a sea of hostility...

...To "make the bear dance," as he urges, however, is unfortunately quite an undertaking...

...To address that question we will have to know much more about the old Russia and its capacity to keep alive, under terrible stress, the various cultural traditions that finally broke through the totalitarian crust...

...Though "personal fanaticism [of Lenin...

...That is an achievement of the people...

...Gorbachev was central to initiating the process that undermined Soviet authoritarianism...

...But it remains to be seen whether the peoples of the disintegrating Soviet Union can transcend the politics of resentment in the midst of economic failure and mounting ethnic tensions...

...Before the RCFN could be formed or even contemplated, though, theforced Communist "marriage" should be dissolved and the peoples allowed to go their separate ways...

...It was designed to bring the country into line with what he called "historical progress...

...Much as I agree with Shleifer's call for directing aid to the republics, I disagree with some of the statements he makes in the process...

...Yet it is worth remembering, amid the euphoria engendered by the collapse of Soviet Communism, that Lenin seized power in the wake of another failed antidemocratic coup led by General Law G. Kornilov...

...I saw the year 1956 as the end of the Communist mythology, and the Polish events of 1980-81 (plus everything that followed) as the end of "actually existing socialism" as a workable system...

...Papa Knew Best" is a gem...

...In Andrei Shleifer's provocative view, the West can and should "make the bear dance" by directing its aid and counsel directly to the republics and enforcing open trading regimes...

...Boris Yeltsin may have inherited that role, although he is not by temperament and training equipped to fill it...

...Comparing an era to the life, and death, of a 73-year-old man is almost Spenglerian in its organic historicism: a concise "Decline of the East," without the German pedagogue's plodding pedantry...

...The U.S...

...And yet, even the most critical observers did not expect the swift end of this irrational but exceedingly powerful state...

...The coup was chancy, it did not hold...

...Outside of Moscow and St...

...While the people are learning the rudiments of democracy, the leaders are learning the limited utility of force, the benefits of international cooperation, and respect for human rights...

...or, to extend the metaphor, one where the unadvertised "Marxist" element seemed a Groucho-Harpo-Chico enterprise...

...Thewoodsaredeep, and hardly traversed yet...

...I am not at all convinced that the Communists have been totally discredited, or that, to quote Alexander Dallin, "Intransigent enemies of democratization and marketization have largely been removed...

...Soviet civilization was born of a mixed marriage, of a Tsarist father and a Russian mother(land), and acquireda thin veneer of Marxism...

...It was ridiculous to apply the term "totalitarian" to a regime that was totally incapable of any ideological offensive, substituted "law and order" for the mobilization of the masses, looked everywhere in the democratic world for a measure of legitimization, begged for social support, and made suicidal concessions...

...According to Alexander Dallin, "The masses turned against him...

...never before in history had such large masses of people been subjected to such total controls...

...The death of totalitarianism and Communism in the Soviet Union, however, was a result of protracted and convoluted processes...

...Yeltsin's late-October option for the market-aspolicy in Russia will test his popularity, and may yet tempt compromise in a direction (market "plus" contract) that must prove, in the long run, a dead end...

...Such political "stability" we are not likely to see again...

...Sidney Harcave Professor of History Emeritus, State University of New York, Binghamton "Lenin Nyet...

...It was equally ridiculous to apply the name "Communist" to leaders who had officially renounced virtually all Communist tenets, including class struggle, worldwide revolution, the withering away of the state and—above all...

...Alfred Erich Senn Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison "LeninNyet...

...Some Soviet republics have been adopted for such initiation...

...The second failed August coup (1991) was indeed a farce...

...But I would question his statement that a "whole school of Sovietological analysis appears bereft of anything to do...

...For that reason I cautiously agree with Kenez' conclusion that the chances for the growth of ademocratic polity in Russia have never been better—provided we do not try too hard "to make the bear dance" and let the Russians cultivate their native democratic roots...

...His contention that "In principle, a return to the familiar...

...Reassuringly, the latest Russian Revolution has demonstrated that human beings are not easily malleable...

...and a "satanizing" of foreign enemies, such as Napoleon or the "Judas" Trotsky...

...But his stated objective, "to make the bear dance," is problematic...

...Debating Democracy in Russia" by Kenez is quite good, especially since he was in Moscow right after the coup collapsed...

...No, Russia (not the Soviet Union...

...The 12 baby bears have neither the political will nor even the rudiments of capitalist institutions and experience required for sound economic management...

...Eventually, as we know, the process ceased to be controllable...

...Both rival schools of Sovietology—the older one, which promoted the "totalitarian" model, and the newer, "revisionist" school—assumed the essential stability of the USSR...

...Careerists aside, millions of Soviet citizens remain loyal and dedicated Communists, and the glorification of Lenin's seizure of power has entered into Soviet political culture...

...But I find Publius too conservative when he proposes calling the new nation "United States of Sovereign Republics," to preserve the familiar USSR...

...Now that Communism is dead, the Cold War is over and "they" are becoming like "us," where is the motivation...

...Tom Fiddick Professor of History, University of Evansville When Robert Conquest's The Great Terror became available recently in Soviet Russia, some intellectuals commented on his British empirical style with a mixture of admiration and critical curiosity, as if to say: "How can anyone write of the horrors he described without expressing more horror himself...

...Half a century ago, Soviet area economists began with a secure agenda: How efficient is the world's first Socialist state...

...This begat the question addressed by Robert V. Daniels, "Is Sovietology dead too...

...We will have to know much more, too, about the permeability of the Soviet regime to the liberalizing aspects of modernization and of living in the modern world...

...Theissueconsisted of seven articles: "Soviet Communism (1917-1991)" by Robert Conquest, "Gorbachev: A Premature Postmortem" by Alexander Dallin, "Is Sovietology Dead Too...

...To be sure, 1991 is not 1917...

...Peter Kenez is not alone in suggesting that these structural changes have produced greater popular concern with political liberties...

...Truth, the elder Shub insisted, cannot be obliterated because some people will always survive to spread it, nor can so cruel, mendacious and vulgar an ideology survive in the land of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy...

...Rumors of its actual death, however, are exaggerated...

...Was it "all a mistake...

...I hope we are not witnessing a repeat of February 1917, to be followed by a new OctoberNovember 1917, with power "lying around in the streets...

...Kornilov's coup, no better organized than the August 1991 putsch, got bogged down on the railway lines to Petrograd and fell apart when soldiers in several key divisions responded to appeals not to follow orders...

...It is not sufficient for us to wish them well and say Godspeed to them...

...We also have Dzhonni Gorbelseed, planting the seeds of democracy and nurturing the tender shoots, and, from the perspective of the Lithuanians, Gorbenstein, the system run amok...

...as The New Leader's contributors make clear...

...Robert V. Daniels is no less misleading when he says the Soviet regime was "like the Right-wing dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, except more so...

...Gorbachev may yet be useful as a foreign policy symbol, however...

...Alexander Dallin's essay was very pithy and dealt with many of the doubts and ambiguities that all area specialists express in assessing Mikhail Gorbachev...

...Would the Russian "bear," after being abused by the "alien" Communists, now want to dance for foreign capitalists...

...militarism...

...I like his comment that Gorbachev "never had an explicit vision of where he was headed, but the scope of the changes he sought expanded until he became scared of what he saw...

...Its coldly statistical description of the horrors endured by Russian workers, especially farm laborers (despite the "emancipation" and the alleged security provided by communal forms, such as the artel and the obshchina), elicited charges of worshipping at the altar of Fact...

...Much will depend on the performance of the economy, on whether the new leaders can deliver what they promise in an atmosphere of disintegration...

...Perhaps most startling is Shleifer's statement that "the IMF and the World Bank are chartered to deal with countries, not with regions...

...elsewhere, it is far from clear that many of the demoralized, troubled masses went beyond watching, waiting and surviving...

...It will be interesting to see how Bolshevism is judged once the dust settles down and all the facts emerge...

...Having said this, I must admit that the rapidity of the change took me by surprise...

...Peter Kenez is right to stress the transformation of Russia over the past seven decades from a nation of poorly educated peasants to a literate, urbanized society...

...As Anatole Shub's friend Regina Kozakova noted, "There were only a couple thousand people there [outside the Moscow 'White House'] at the most dangerous [twilight] hour...

...As for the author's concern about the Russian "brute" masses, a partial explanation for their behavior may lie in his observation that "the intelligentsia are leaving in droves...

...Reaction against Kornilov's August 1917 march on Petrograd was intense...

...Nor, with one exception, did they try to deal with the larger philosophical questions implicit in that demise...

...The belief that Russian "socialism" was spiritually and ethically superior to "egotistic" Western culture finds its origins in pre-Marxist nationalism...

...Moscow as a whole did not revolt, strike, stand at the barricades...

...In particular, we need to prevail upon the republics to accept a customs union that acknowledges their economic interdependence despite their emotional demands for long-suppressed independence...

...The new generation finally has shed that arrogant delusion, as well as the Russian messianism associated first with "Moscow as Third Rome," andlaterwith the Third International...

...The exception was Robert Conquest...

...It seemed to me unlikely that the real Russia would break through the structures built by the temporal power, and anyway it was not entirely clear exactly which elements of the real Russia, among the different ones, might eventually prevail...

...But in reality the emergence of an outspokenly political opposition, no matter how wise and important, was a consequence, not the cause, of detotalitarianization...

...I strongly doubt that this was his intent, but the old habits of squeezing every member of the Russian Empire, and its successor the Soviet Union, into the Russian mold find their echoes in such careless references...

...by Robert V.Daniels, "Papa Knew Best" by Anatole Shub, "Make the Bear Dance" by Andrei Shleifer, "Debating Democracy in Russia" by Peter Kenez, and "An Open Letter to Mikhail and Boris"from Publius...

...Why did people lose faith in it...

...Perhaps most striking is his description of the courage of some members of the Russian intelligentsia in the face of Stalinist terror...

...deification of a single leader...

...The picture of the country projected at that time was of a historical enterprise seized by a few people with an idea—a cruel idea...

...It has always served as a beacon of intelligence regarding Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union...

...Stephen S. Rosenfeld Deputy editorial page editor, the Washington "Post" From your Lenin issue I take confirmation that the future of the former Soviet Union is still very much open...

...That is not to say all or even a majority of Soviet citizens have a full understanding of, and respect for, democratic institutions and procedures...

...On the one hand, the Soviet system was as thoroughly repressive, inefficient and undemocratic as the most strident anti-Communists claimed...

...I disagree with Peter Kenez' description of the August events (of which I was an eyewitness) as a "revolution...

...Perhaps, as Kenez suggests, there has never been a better chance for the development of democracy in Russia, but it will not happen without substantial help and support from other democratic societies...

...must fashion a coherent policy to assist and promote democracy in all the republics of the Soviet Union...

...There was no nationwide heroic resistance...

...Soviet "Marxists, especially after 1929, have had more in common with the old Slavophile-Narodnik mentality than with genuine Marxism or even Leninism, which at least acknowledged backward Russia's need to go through a capitalist stage...

...Gorbachev's experiment, with its unique unilateral contraction of global ambition, opened the Soviet Union to the outside world in unprecedented fashion...

...could bring about stability," is simply wrong...

...But thedeathof Soviet Communism is far from assured...

...His obituary, if not his four-line poem at the end, was a metaphorical tour de force...

...Will Sovietology survive the death of Communism...

...We have to work with what is left of the center and the republics...

...Abram Bergson George F. Baker Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard Andrei Shleifer portrays very well the dire state of the Soviet economy today and the difficulties this poses for Western policy makers...

...After decades of socialization, censorship and repression, the Soviet system failed to produce the pliant Communist subject...

...Professor of History, Ohio State University I very much enjoyed reading the Special Issue celebrating the "end of Communism...

...The peoples and republics of the former Soviet Union face intimidating tasks...

...No, Sovietology is not dead yet, and should not die," he responds...

...But let me comment on each in turn...

...I am pleased that it is continuing to stand in the vanguard with respect to events and developments in this crucial part of our world...

...To so many, in the Russian Republic and throughout the country, the old "social compact," exchanging political quiescence for lowlevel, egalitarian economic security, was "legitimate," natural, bearable...

...But whether it is, as yet, the response of all the fractious peoples of the ex-USSR is less clear—which prompts three caveats...

...While admirably explaining, and ultimately rejecting, Western preferences for dealing with a center, Shleifer nevertheless seems to concede that it would be "much easier for the West to do business with the central government...

...Both in theory and practice, it was emphatically Left-totalitarian...

...Certainly, if the occasion is the demise of Soviet Communism...

...By presenting his carefully crafted program in terms of enlisting republican leaders in the task of reforming the Soviet Union, however, he implicitly suggests that something like a Soviet economy will continue to exist...

...The Soviet Union under Gorbachev was already a post-totalitarian andpostCommunist country...

...With or without the Communist Party and the KGB, a resumption of Soviet-style planning and management of the economy would not right the monstrous wrongs the center has perpetuated for so long...

...Some of these people are wonderful human beings who (particularly in Poland) are convinced that their courageousness and cleverness were the main factors in the nearly global defeat of the totalitarian dragon...

...In 1889, Aleksandr Polovtsov remarked to the Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich that it had become "fashionable" to believe the reign of Nicholas I was an "ideal time," and urged him not to be deceived...

...Vladislav Krasnov Director of Russian Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies Focusing on the fall of Soviet Communism is understandable, but one regrets that none of the contributors to "Lenin Nyet...

...is excellent—wellwritten, balanced, thought-provoking, a pleasure to read and a treasure to keep...

...Our focus should be on supporting their drives for independence...

...But compared with the brutalities Hitler had planned for the Soviet Union, Stalin's methods can be justified...

...Area specialists who studied the Soviet Union closely were in general agreement that the system was too powerful to admit significant change any time in the near future...

...Growing confusion and economic chaos are breeding a desire for "strong leadership" in many people...

...In these circumstances Sovietology, and especially the art of Kremlinology, must not be consigned to the Museum of Antiquities or to the ash heap of history...

...Studies of authoritarian systems in Africa, Asia and Latin America offered few insights into the possibilities for transforming the Soviet dictatorship...

...But Dallin hardly helps to illuminate the situation by labeling the coup makers "extreme Rightists," even though they objected to such Rightist slogans (now advocated by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and the "democrats") as private property, free market, anti-Communism, and procapitalism...

...The Right needed a strong, resolutely totalitarian enemy, while the Left wanted to believe that the Soviet Union, despite its cruel past and recent obvious floundering, had created a viable alternative to the capitalist system...

...Resentment against the Communist Party and its haughty, pampered functionaries was rampant well before August 1991...

...Popular hatred for anything that smacked of restoring the old regime proved unwilling or unable to distinguish between the Bolshevism of Lenin and genuinely democratic movements...

...I'm sure Shleifer did not mean it, but some Russians as well as nonRussians might take offense at this idiom...

...We will be long studying and arguing over whether the pressure tactics of Ronald Reagan, who rejected liberal belief and adopted an uncompromising antiCommunist stand, were central or peripheral to the systemic collapse that started becoming evident in Moscow in the mid-1980s...

...Each republic would have to follow complex macroeconomic policies to keep its currency strong— including curbing budget deficits and maintaining reasonably high interest rates to hold down bank borrowing by enterprises, and otherwise curtailing the money supply...

...asks historian Robert V. Daniels...

...One wonders whether Gorbachev's dilemma was a case of couldn't (because of opposition from conservatives to a more radical pace of change) or wouldn't (because he "became scared")—or possibly a combination of both, as his initial post-coup performance indicated...

...Finally, inevitable as the "market" may seem, exhausted as other modes of economic organization have been demonstrated to be, Robert Daniels' reference to the relevance of history—of "institutions, cultures, and ideologies" —specifies an important complication...

...A critical step toward its demise was the final crystallization of the nomenklatura under Leonid I. Brezhnev...

...Moscow has 9 million people, for God's sake...

...One point that I thought especially valuable was made by Robert Daniels, who cautioned that "we need historical insight in order to understand the former Communist bloc and the transformation it is going through...

...And it is indeed fitting that the end of Bolshevism should be celebrated in the pages of The New Leader, given its pioneering and unwavering belief that the house Lenin built would collapse under its own weight...

...The emergence of an officially privileged stratum, enjoying a certain corporate independence and no longer ready to subordinate everything to the "building of Communism," inevitably furthered the process of de-Communization...

...I, too, am optimistic about the prospects for democracy, albeit without a sound basis for my feelings...

...Our inability decisively to shape events is frustrating, but by recognizing it we can at least avoid disillusionment...

...Andrei Shleifer may overestimate Western leverage in this situation, but in principle his analysis is unexceptionable...

...Lenin's offspring, as Robert Conquest notes in his obituary, was a warped and sickly creature containing the seeds of its own downfall...

...This experiment will cause less suffering than its predecessors—but only if people develop a deeper understanding of the diverse cultural dynamics at work in the West and in the lands of the former Soviet bloc...

...Then neither the IMF nor the World Bank would have any technicalities to overcome...

...Its aim is to create—democratically, if possible—a political and economic organization that can overcome the humiliating backwardness of multinational and multiethnic Eurasia...

...It is a positive gain that the future is again open for the victimized peoples...

...I believe the democratic way is the right way to dig out, butnoneof us can say with confidence that, with or without generous American and international support, it is going to work...

...It is an insightful report card, with pluses andminuses fully recorded...

...Walter D. Connor Professor of Political Science, Boston University For Lenin, and what he has represented, the post-August coup developments are a resounding "Nyet...

...The ground rules for Soviet policies were established in World War I, when the European powers and the United States globalized their political ambition...

...In spite of Conquest's convincing bid for the role of choirmaster, the six others in the Special Issue did not pick up his double cue, "ByebyeKarl,/Byebye Vladimir...

...I would suggest Russian Commonwealth of Free Nations...

...Petersburg, I found a disturbing atmosphere of nostalgia for the days of "law and order," "purposeful leadership," "moral strength," and "public confidence" that had characterized earlier times...

...But what of a third...

...We know well that economic difficulties can lead quickly to authoritarianism, despotism and dictatorship...

...I enjoyed Robert Daniels' "in house" observations in "Is Sovietology Dead Too...

...We will have to get the dope on Soviet politics—on what actually happened...

...No society has ever been dominated so long by such an unyielding, dogmatic ideology...

...attempted to discuss the August Moscow events in the context of the demise of Communism elsewhere...

...When thecrunch came—in 1964 and in 1991—both leaders were short of allies...

...Now more than ever, too, The New Leader must stand ready to promote that process of democratization...

...It might even produce a song the West can learn to hum...

...Michael W. Curran Director, Office of Study Abroad...

...But deeper forces encouraged the formation of the many social movements—the national fronts, independent labor unions, peasant parties, women's organizations, and ecology groups—that have emerged over the past few years...

...For a historian, the challenge is to "sustain critical thought" and avoid the temptation to treat the Communist phase as a "blank spot" and a "black hole...

...The challenge of constructing a new order that better serves the needs and aspirations of its citizens need not be hindered by threats to national survival from outside the former boundaries of the USSR...

...Meanwhile, realism and liberal belief seemed to dictate wariness but also a quest for as much of a political truce as the circumstances would allow...

...The postmortems on the Bolshevik decades bring to mind the verdicts on the reign of Nicholas I, who, like Lenin, sought to establish an enduring, selfcorrecting system...

...Nonetheless, I thought the Soviet Union might survive in its previous form until the end of this century...

...Potentially, this represents a great victory for the forces of democratization...

...Whatever the heir may be, it will not be a bear dancing to a World Bank tune, as Andrei Shleifer hopes...

...I could not agree more with his father's conclusion that "Communism was a malignant transplant, essentially alien to Russian society and culture...

...Make the Bear Dance" seems to have anticipated the headlines...

...A. Walicki O'Neill Professor of History, University of Notre Dame For a long time many people in the West, and especially Sovietologists, refused to accept that what they called "Communism" (a misnomer, since the Communist system proved incapable of ever being born) was going to collapse...

...In any event, I'm not sure he has retained a "functional role as one of the few symbolic figures standing above the confining Soviet scene...

...Daniels describes an attitude that hasn't had widespread currency for many years...

...In my view, this is the main reason why its ultimate cave-in has been perceived as an unexpected, almost miraculous event...

...The displays of popular opposition to the August coup were certainly heartening...

...So were the pro-Yeltsin and prodemocracy demonstrations I witnessed in Moscow last February 24, the day after the officially organized antidemocracy demonstrations held on Army Day...

...We could easily overestimate what we might accomplish with even sizable aid, and so far the sum being considered, $7 billion, is by no means sizable...

...The system disintegrated, and now he, like others, is trying to construct a new Ark...

...I would say Gorbachev turned against the masses in 1988 when he began to recentralize his administration, becoming Gorbpoleon, advocating a new authoritarianism to teach the people to live by law...

...But Lenin's 1917 coup, too, was narrowbased at first, chancy, "contingent"— then history's cards fell differently...

...It is hard to envision the republics doing all that in the face of enormous populist demands for high wages to safeguard living standards...

...It lacked the essentials of modern power politics: industries and a collective national resolve...

...The endurance and resilience of Communism are characteristics I am not prepared to dismiss totally at this stage...

...We will never know if anyone else could have done better" is a fitting tribute to a complex leader fighting formidable odds...

...Obituaries are about memories...

...It might well have been illegitimate from the very beginning, but even in the 1930s Stalin ruled through a combination of acceptance and force...

...The Soviet republics are countries...

...he has set up a straw man by not pro viding specific examples of what he is criticizing...

...The weakness and indecision of the plotters were the keys to the rapid failure...

...Perhaps we underestimated the popular element...

...Indeed, to produce a harmonious (multinational) society, both the Russians and non-Russians will have to compromise with historical Russia, to whom they have been connected by fate, and a new constitution will be needed...

...What is overlooked in the Shleifer scheme is that for trade to remain free, currencies would have to continue to be convertible among the republics...

...Economic and political creativity have not been thoroughly extinguished...

...Eventually MacGorbeth ran afoul of his own ambitions, and like Prince Gorblet, the Soviet leader proved indecisive at crucial moments...

...Besides being offensive, it is a very inaccurate portrayal of the Soviet peoples...

...A major Khrushchev era characteristic was the weakness of demands for fundamental institutional improvements...

...But Gorbachev, and the people, had a Boris Yeltsin who, however loosely, pressed the demands of the intelligentsia and offered some hope of a vaguer sort to the less articulate masses: a vital support lacking in the collective leadership that dumped Khrushchev...

...There are similarities between Left- and Right-totalitarians, of course, but they are best explained by the French saying, Les extremes se touchent...

...We must not forget that the present crisis was produced by that familiar, strong control at the top...

...As for the situational aspect of totalitarianism, it is well understood by people in the field...

...Gorbachev was praised as a true democrat...

...The Bolshevik leaders, patriots in Marxist disguise, were determined to overcome that weakness...

...Peter Kenez and Anatole Shub both point to the fact that there is much pessimism among people in Russia, but they themselves tend to be overwhelmed by the feelings of immediate euphoria that so many of us felt in the initial aftermath of the failed coup...

...Historians in the former Soviet Union, please take note...

...Padma Desai Professor of Economics, Columbia University Can an obituary be joyous...

...Polovtsov had served for four years under Nicholas I and assured the Tsesarevich that the reign was one "of lies, deceit, servility, of all kinds of untruth...

...But I would suggest that it may be a bit too soon to erect the tombstone of Communism, or to take comfort in our long-held conviction that its "death is inevitable...

...Marx noted somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce...

...The latter's recollections of meetings with Georgi V. Plekhanov and other founders of Russian Social Democracy, and his firsthand assessments of Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin as people, are revealing...

...Karl Marx, on the other hand, after receiving a copy of the book, decided to learn the Russian language in order to read it, and compared it with Friedrich Engels' work of a similar title about England...

...The hardliners of the first (for instance, Alain Besançon) insisted to the last minute that Soviet totalitarianism was in good health and could not possibly change...

...Andrei Shleifer's case for directing Western assistance to the republics makes a lot of sense...

...Moreover, the peoples of the Soviet Union have indeed become more urbanized and better educated than in 1917...

...A second set of responses will appear in our next issue...

...It was always expected that the authentic, complex, natural historical pasts of Russia and the others would assert themselves, although when and how and to what effect were questions...

...The future is very uncertain, and I am not confident that the republics of the former Soviet Union are firmly launched on a democratic track that will lead them to integration with the Western world...

...Better educated, urbane, with greater aspirations than in Nikita S. Khrushchev's time, the country Gorbachev inherited has proved since 1985 less manipulable, more demanding...

...Alexander Dallin correctly observes that Soviet President Gorbachev "is not prepared to face his weakened role in a disintegrating empire," and that "Washington is not conceptually or politically ready to respond to this new state of affairs either...

...The first failed August coup (1917) led to the tragedy of Bolshevism...

...In many ways the system continues to function as it has for decades...

...The bear is a Russian symbol...

...Charles E. Ziegler Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Louisville Sovietologists had great difficulty grasping the revolutionary changes that occurred in the Soviet Union over the past six years...

...The contexts of the two failed coups differ significantly...

...That is in order if only for humanitarian reasons, but the assistance might in addition limit the opportunities of by no means extinct extremist political forces to regain ascendancy...

...Communist functionaries continue to prevent the implementation of land reform and otherwise subvert efforts to create a market economy...

...Immediately and in the foreseeable future, therefore, I think they need to dance to a single tune: A common currency, with strict financial discipline exercised from a center closely supervised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is essential...

...In his courage to do so lies his claim on history...

...Nevertheless, rejection of Soviet Communism is not tantamount to democratization...

...Anatole Shub's memoir of his father, David Shub, is not only heartwarming, it contains deeper insights...

...in his vacillation in the face of the results rest the qualifications (not fatal) of that claim...

...Things could go well in the view of some of your contributors, but the problems are formidable...

...there are also other lessons to be absorbed...

...It is unlikely that the events of August 1991 obliterated three generations' worth of indoctrination in three days' time...

...Sounder analyses could be heard, of course (like Zbigniew Brzezinski's theory of "phases in the retreat from Communism"), but apparently they were too sophisticated to be effectively used in political struggles...

...For now, "the failed coup has served to end the stalemate and clear the pipes [of reform]," as Alexander Dallin observes...

...The condition, though, could not last forever...

...covered the gamut of American Gorbomania—from Gorbistotle, the founder of new thinking, to Gorbiavelli, the master manipulator...

...I fully agree with Robert V. Daniels that Russian and East European studies in the West must not be diminished...

...Is Mikhail S. Gorbachev finished...

...the idea of a marketless economy...

...Daniels is right: We need more historical insight...

...dogmatic orthodoxy...

...a vast bureaucracy...

...This question was ceaselessly explored with the help of economic theory and empirical analysis in the context of Soviet institutions, politics and policies...

...I trust that they will learn the right lessons and avoid some of our mistakes of the past 200 years...

...Two months later, the better-organized Bolshevik coup, ostensibly in defense of the soviets, did not evoke similar outrage...

...Currently yet another experiment is under way...

...They must build new institutions and new philosophies, learning from each other and from the past...

...A revolution has failed, but not in a way that dictates any particular successor regime or state of affairs...

...But the comparison between Soviet achievements and "historical progress" discredited both Stalin's and Gorbachev's efforts...

...What has developed over the years is a healthy skepticism toward authority, plus a readiness to tackle issues without a directing hand from Moscow...

...Second, despite these sobering reflections, Soviet society had indeed changed...

...Several of them, especially Anatole Shub's "Papa Knew Best," were deeply moving...

...The methods designed for this purpose were entirely experimental...

...No such external foe seriously threatens the USSR today...

...Without that external security Gorbachev's controlled de-Stalinization would have been impossible...

...Each featureof Stalinism was present in the pre-Soviet past: a political police...

...Last January, while visiting St...

...expansionism...

...His "obituary" correctly traces the origin of the "deceased" to Karl Marx, who claimed with some justification that his teachings were inspired by German philosophy, English economics (and the trade union movement), and the French Revolution (in its Jacobin manifestations...

...Shouldn't they try instead to undo the brutalizing effect their former subservience to the regime (especially in education and agitprop) had on the masses...