Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum - Softcover

Malia, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674002105 ISBN 13: 9780674002104

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2000

Synopsis

As the dust clears from the fall of Communism, will Western eyes see Russia, the unclaimed orphan of Western history or Russia as she truly is, a perplexing but undeniable member of the European family? A dazzling work of intellectual history by a world-renowned scholar, spanning the years from Peter the Great to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book gives us a clear and sweeping view of Russia not as an eternal barbarian menace but as an outermost, if laggard, member in the continuum of European nations.

The Russian troika hurtles through these pages. The Spectre, modernity's belief in salvation by revolutionary ideology, haunts them. Alice's looking glass greets us at this turn and that. Throughout, Martin Malia's inspired use of these devices aptly conveys the surreality of the whole Soviet Russian phenomenon and the West's unbalanced perception of it. He shows us the usually distorted images and stereotypes that have dominated Western ideas about Russia since the eighteenth century. And once these emerge as projections of the West's own internal anxieties, he shifts his focus to the institutional structures and cultural forms Russia shares with her neighbors.

Here modern Europe is depicted as an East-West cultural gradient in which the central and eastern portions respond to the Atlantic West's challenge in delayed and generally skewed fashion. Thus Russia, after two centuries of building then painfully liberalizing its Old Regime, in 1917 tried to leap to a socialism that would be more advanced and democratic than European capitalism. The result was a cruel caricature of European civilization, which mesmerized and polarized the West for most of this century. As the old East-West gradient reappears in genuinely modern guise, this brilliantly imaginative work shows us the reality that has for so long tantalized--and eluded--Western eyes.

About this title

Review

Martin Malia, Professor Emeritus of Russian History at the University of California at Berkeley, hopes to rescue Russia from its status as menacing Other and restore it to its rightful place as a member of Europe. In Russia Under Western Eyes, Malia argues that there is no real polarity between Europe and Russia, but that "Russia has at different times been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role in Europe than because of the fears and frustrations, or the hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own domestic problems." Following recent German historiography, Malia traces a continuum of development from West (most advanced) to East (somewhat laggard) and points out that there is as much difference between, say, Germany and France as between Russia and Europe. In the end, however, Russia remains a poor, weak sister--her growth stunted by bad choices, notably Communism.

Malia chronicles the West's varying assessments: Russia celebrated for its enlightened despotism; Russia despised for its Oriental despotism; Russia welcomed back as simply one distinct culture within Europe; and, after the 1917 Revolution, Russia (to quote Churchill) as a "riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Nearly half the book focuses in on Soviet Russia, as both an "experiment" (1917 to 1945) and as an "empire" (1945 to 1991). Not one to sit on the fence, Malia is clear about his position: Soviet Communism is an experiment that failed because Communism itself is doomed to fail. Though many scholars agree, Malia's anti-Soviet ferocity (he has often been described as "an old-fashioned cold warrior") somewhat diminishes the scholarly value of this work. General readers, however, will appreciate the sweeping scope of this remarkable book.

From the Back Cover

The basic conception is original and interesting; the issues are real and clearly conceived; the style is pungent and alive; and the entire treatment rests on an exceptional combination of perspicacity and sensitiveness, both of thought about, and of feeling for, Russia past and present.-Isaiah Berlin

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0674002105
• ISBN 13: 9780674002104
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528