Ruling Russia: Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin - Hardcover

Zimmerman, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691161488 ISBN 13: 9780691161488

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2014

Synopsis

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many hoped that Russia's centuries-long history of autocratic rule might finally end. Yet today's Russia appears to be retreating from democracy, not progressing toward it. Ruling Russia is the only book of its kind to trace the history of modern Russian politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the presidency of Vladimir Putin. It examines the complex evolution of communist and post-Soviet leadership in light of the latest research in political science, explaining why the democratization of Russia has all but failed. William Zimmerman argues that in the 1930s the USSR was totalitarian but gradually evolved into a normal authoritarian system, while the post-Soviet Russian Federation evolved from a competitive authoritarian to a normal authoritarian system in the first decade of the twenty-first century. He traces how the selectorate--those empowered to choose the decision makers--has changed across different regimes since the end of tsarist rule. The selectorate was limited in the period after the revolution, and contracted still further during Joseph Stalin's dictatorship, only to expand somewhat after his death. Zimmerman also assesses Russia's political prospects in future elections. He predicts that while a return to totalitarianism in the coming decade is unlikely, so too is democracy. Rich in historical detail, Ruling Russia is the first book to cover the entire period of the regime changes from the Bolsheviks to Putin, and is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why Russia still struggles to implement lasting democratic reforms.

About this title

About the Author

William Zimmerman is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan, where he is also research professor emeritus at the Institute for Social Research. This is his fourth book with Princeton University Press, his most recent being The Russian People and Foreign Policy: Russian Elite and Mass Perspectives, 1993-2000.

From the Back Cover

"Zimmerman provides specialists in comparative politics with important insights about authoritarian, totalitarian, and democratic regimes. He reveals the importance of uncertain political outcomes, the size of the selectorate, and the constraints posed by institutions in distinguishing not just between democracy and dictatorship but also among different types of authoritarian regimes. He makes the deceptively simple point that regimes do not just rise and fall--they also evolve."--Valerie Jane Bunce, Cornell University

"Ruling Russia is a masterful survey of Soviet and post-Soviet political history. Zimmerman analyzes the successive phases of expansion and contraction of the circle of those who influence the choice of leaders and policies from Lenin through Putin. Written in a clear and forceful style, the book is the first major overview of the continuities and changes in Russian leadership politics from 1917 to the present."--Thomas F. Remington, Emory University

"Zimmerman makes a unique and innovative contribution to our thinking about the evolution of Soviet and Russian politics since 1917. With brilliance and welcome flashes of wry humor, he leads readers through the history of both Soviet and post-Soviet politics, right through to today. Ruling Russia is an important book."--George W. Breslauer, author of Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders

"This is an excellent book. Ruling Russia presents a unified account of nearly a century of Russian politics from one of the best and best-known political scientists specializing in this topic, pulling together what for many scholars would be more than a lifetime's work on both the USSR and post-Soviet Russia."--Henry E. Hale, author of Why Not Parties in Russia?: Democracy, Federalism, and the State

From the Inside Flap

"Zimmerman provides specialists in comparative politics with important insights about authoritarian, totalitarian, and democratic regimes. He reveals the importance of uncertain political outcomes, the size of the selectorate, and the constraints posed by institutions in distinguishing not just between democracy and dictatorship but also among different types of authoritarian regimes. He makes the deceptively simple point that regimes do not just rise and fall--they also evolve."--Valerie Jane Bunce, Cornell University

"Ruling Russia is a masterful survey of Soviet and post-Soviet political history. Zimmerman analyzes the successive phases of expansion and contraction of the circle of those who influence the choice of leaders and policies from Lenin through Putin. Written in a clear and forceful style, the book is the first major overview of the continuities and changes in Russian leadership politics from 1917 to the present."--Thomas F. Remington, Emory University

"Zimmerman makes a unique and innovative contribution to our thinking about the evolution of Soviet and Russian politics since 1917. With brilliance and welcome flashes of wry humor, he leads readers through the history of both Soviet and post-Soviet politics, right through to today. Ruling Russia is an important book."--George W. Breslauer, author ofGorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders

"This is an excellent book. Ruling Russia presents a unified account of nearly a century of Russian politics from one of the best and best-known political scientists specializing in this topic, pulling together what for many scholars would be more than a lifetime's work on both the USSR and post-Soviet Russia."--Henry E. Hale, author ofWhy Not Parties in Russia?: Democracy, Federalism, and the State

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ruling Russia

AUTHORITARIANISM FROM THE REVOLUTION TO PUTIN

By William Zimmerman

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16148-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii, 
Introduction, 1, 
Chapter One From Democratic Centralism to Democratic Centralism, 14, 
Chapter Two Alternative Mobilization Strategies, 1917–1934, 43, 
Chapter Three From Narrow Selectorate to Autocracy, 75, 
Chapter Four The Great Purge, 102, 
Chapter Five From Totalitarianism to Welfare Authoritarianism, 130, 
Chapter Six Uncertainty and "Democratization": The Evolution of Post-Brezhnevian Politics, 1982–1991, 164, 
Chapter Seven Democratizing Russia, 1991–1997, 196, 
Chapter Eight The Demise of Schumpeterian Democracy, the Return to Certainty, and Normal ("Full") Authoritarianism, 1998–2008, 220, 
Chapter Nine The Return of Uncertainty? The 2011–2012 Electoral Cycle, 267, 
Chapter Ten The Past and Future of Russian Authoritarianism, 291, 
Selected Bibliography, 311, 
Index, 323, 

CHAPTER 1

From Democratic Centralism to Democratic Centralism

The Bolsheviks successfully seized power in the fall 1917. Historians dispute the support the Bolsheviks received in accomplishing that goal. This is an argument among people with strong views, some of whom are more reasonable than others. What is beyond dispute is that the phrase "Bolshevik coup d'état" presupposes the existence of an état. The wags' retort that there was no état to coup, its flipness notwithstanding, is to the point. The key institutions of the entire Soviet period emerged out of that institutional vacuum during the four-year period from October 1917 to the March 1921 Tenth Party Congress, when the ban on factions within the Party and the New Economic Policy (NEP) were adopted.

What bears in mind in reading the present chapter are two points. First, the period was initially characterized by more open politics and greater attention to regularized voting within a small selectorate than at any time from March 1921 until the late 1980s during Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as CPSU general secretary. Second, the story of the four years after the seizure of power is one of a steadily narrowing selectorate as the country became increasingly authoritarian. Among the party leaders disregard for procedural niceties grew but regularized voting remained an important aspect of decision making. It got far worse subsequently. (The colossal violence that attended regime-society relations during War Communism is described at the beginning of the next chapter, where the central argument is that aside from the interventions of multiple foreign states there not only was a civil war between the White and the Reds but an at least equally violent civil war between the Reds and the Greens.)

By far the most open election in Russian politics prior to the Gorbachev era occurred almost immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power. I have in mind the election of the Constituent Assembly. It was, Oliver H. Radkey tells us, a "fundamentally free election, contested by definitely organized and sharply divergent parties, on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage." In an overwhelmingly peasant country, it is not a surprise to learn that the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), a strongly pro-peasant party, got the most votes by a large plurality. The Bolsheviks finished second overall and way ahead of the other parties, but well behind the SRs.

In the strategically significant cities, as Radkey again makes clear, two trends stand out from examining the voting results. First, the cities became increasingly polarized between June and December 1917. Voters were increasingly taking sides with either the Bolsheviks or the strongest "bourgeois liberal" party, one that favored constitutional democracy, the Constitutional Democrats (hence the abbreviation, Kadety). In Moscow (the pattern is rather similar for Petrograd [now again St. Peters burg]), elections for various levels of government took place in June, September, and November. From June to November, the vote for the SRs shrank from approximately 375,000 to about 62,000, with roughly the same number of votes cast in November as in June. The vote for the Kadets increased from slightly less than a 110,000 to almost 264,000, while the Bolshevik vote increased from 75,000 to 366,000.

Second, as these figures bear out, the shift in the Bolsheviks' favor gave them some claim that they were on the side of history. Persuading themselves that this was the case, Lenin's "Theses on the Constituent Assembly" made clear that he and the majority of the Bolshevik leadership were reluctantly allowing the vote to take place but that they would brook no notions that the Constituent Assembly should in any way interfere with "Soviet power." Should it attempt to do so, matters would be "settled in a revolutionary way." This is what happened: the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly a day after it first met.

The timing of the voting for the Constituent Assembly has engendered some confusion. Despite the occurrence of the actual voting in the weeks immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power, it was the Provisional Government and not the Bolsheviks that authorized the election of the Constituent Assembly delegates. The resulting election has been properly termed "one of history's first universal adult suffrage voting systems." It is a mistake, however, to characterize it as part of a Bolshevik grand strategy of combining closely held power with symbolic universalism. That came later.

Rather, the elections the Bolsheviks themselves conducted prior to the adoption of the 1936 "Stalin" Constitution were ones in which categories of people were systematically underrepresented or disenfranchised. The 1918 Constitution explicitly disenfranchised "those who employ others for the sake of profit," capitalists, private business men, "monks and priests of all religious denominations," the tsarist police and its agents, members of the former ruling family, and those who are "mentally deranged or imbecile."

Similarly, in a manner akin to the elections to the Duma after the Russian Revolution of 1905 and prior to World War I, the peasantry were systematically underrepresented. Both the Russian Constitution of 1918 and the first Soviet Constitution (1924) established that the Congress of Soviets would consist of "representatives of city and town soviets on the basis of one deputy for each 25,000 voters and of representatives of provincial and district congresses of soviets on the basis of one deputy for every 125,000 inhabitants." Clearly, given that the villagers were explicitly discriminated against, it makes little sense to consider them as a group as part of a selectorate or to regard elections in which they were treated as second-class citizens as "universal adult suffrage voting systems." Prior to 1936 (by which time the kulaks had been liquidated as a class and the putative capitalist exploiters had largely been killed or imprisoned) only the urban working class was fully enfranchised.

In the earliest months of the Bolsheviks' tenure in power, when Lenin himself chaired the meetings of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), a case could be made that the workers in general should be considered part of the selectorate. They were certainly beneficiaries of the new regime. During periods of extreme hardship they stood at the head of the line for bread and other food provisions. They were explicitly favored in selecting the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which selected the Central Executive Committee, which in turn chose membership of Sovnarkom. Quickly, though, Russian workers lost the weapons workers everywhere have traditionally relied on as sources of power—independent trade unions and the right to strike. This had the effect of subordinating them to regime discipline and mobilization in much the way as soldiers in the Red Army. Still, for a brief period it could be argued that their vote counted in that the Congress of Soviets selected the Central Executive Committee and it selected the Sovnarkom. It was a brief period, however; slightly fewer than two-thirds of the members of the Congress of Soviets in March 1918 were Bolsheviks. By the end of 1919, Party membership in the Congress had reached 97 percent. Party discipline had predictable consequences. As a result, voting for the All-Russian Congress of Soviets became routinized and merely an opportunity for the Party to mobilize the citizenry, while Sovnarkom soon became a locus where Party decisions were ratified.

But in 1918–20, Sovnarkom mattered. All major decisions were made by the Party Central Committee, but the Council of People's Commissars initially played an important role. Rapidly, though, the various governmental institutions became either symbolic, as in the case of the Congress of Soviets, or administrative organs, as in the case of Sovnarkom. The outlines of the party-state emerged over a brief time span. "Except for the brief period between December 22, 1917, and March 15, 1918, when three Left SR's held portfolios in the Sovnarkom," it was populated only by Bolsheviks. During that period, Lenin himself chaired the sessions. Philip Roeder notes that initially, moreover, Sovnarkom "enjoyed considerable autonomy in its daily operation, including independence in the appointment of its own members." Vigorous debates took place over important matters, such as the debate whether to ratify the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and decisions relating to the links between the Party and the trade unions.

As the Party apparatus developed, Sovnarkom evolved into an administrative organ the function of which was to implement the Party Politburo's decisions. Several things led to its downgrading. Lenin was strategic in using both government and Party organs in his efforts, not uniformly successful, to achieve his goals. His first stroke in 1922 effectively removed him from a key role in decisions. From October/ November 1917 until Yakov (Jakob) Sverdlov's untimely death in early 1919, Sverdlov was, for all intents and purposes, the Party Secretariat. Fainsod notes that "he [Sverdlov] functioned largely without staff, and the only complete record of his transactions was in his head."

Following his death, the Party apparatus grew rapidly. With the creation of the Organization Bureau (Orgburo) and the rapid growth in the size of the Secretariat, it quickly developed that a sizeable fraction of key governmental commissariat (later, ministry) appointments were made either by the Secretariat, the Orgburo, or, in the most important cases, the Politburo. "Between April 1920 and February 1921 these central party organs [the Politburo, the Secretariat and the Orgburo] reportedly made 1715 appointments to Sovnarkom positions in Moscow." (At this juncture [early 1920], Stalin was the only member of the Orgburo who was also a member of the Politburo. In April 1922, the post of general secretary was established. Stalin became the first general secretary. From that time on, he was the only person on all three key bodies: the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Organization Bureau.) By 1923, Orgburo was creating the famous lists of appointments for administrative positions known to all as the nomenklatura.

Thus, in a brief time span, legislative and governmental institutions that at that juncture might have resulted in the workers constituting the selectorate became harnessed to the dominant Party institutions. War Communism, as implemented, had transformed trade unions largely into administrative organs of the enterprise. Party discipline in Congresses of Soviets that were almost unanimously composed of Party members anticipated the subsequent Congresses where voting unanimity was pervasive. Lacking a central dominating figure like Lenin, Sovnarkom became the administrative arm of the Party, not a place where key substantive decisions were rendered. The Party apparatus, composed of the Politburo, Orgburo, and the Secretariat, held control over appointments both to the regional Party positions and also to key administrative positions in the economy. It remained the case in 1921 that one could talk of a sizeable electorate. But it was membership in the Party, no longer status as a worker or a toiler, which best delimited the selectorate. It would narrow still further as the 1920s progressed. Along with those disenfranchised by the 1918 Constitution and hunted by the Cheka, the majority of peasants and workers had by the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921 or certainly by the defeat of the Workers' Opposition in March 1922 at the Eleventh Party Congress (see below, pp. 30–35) become, in Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Siverson, and Morrow's term, "residents."

Within the Party, however, vigorous debate was initially the norm. In the first months after the seizure of power, debates in various fora among the Bolsheviks over what became the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk exemplified the initial style of politics within the Party. (Brest-Litovsk was the 1918 treaty between Germany and its allies [other signatories on the German side were Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey] and Russia that allowed the latter to extricate itself from the First World War.) It came at what was, on its face, enormous cost. "By this agreement Russia lost 34 percent of her population, 32 per cent of her agricultural land, 85 per cent of her beet-sugar land, 54 percent of her industrial undertakings, and 89 per cent of her coal mines." These losses proved of short duration. When Germany lost World War I, the Bolsheviks succeeded in quickly reclaiming most of the tsarist patrimony it had ceded to Germany and its allies. What proved to be far more important was that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk made it possible for the Bolsheviks to stay in power.

That said, the title of John Wheeler-Bennett's book, first published in 1938, Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, March 1918, was apt for Western readers then. It is probably even more a propos for Westerners ninety years after the event and seventy years after the publication of the Wheeler-Bennett book. I draw blank stares from both my students and some of my colleagues when mention of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is made. That is unfortunate given its role in perpetuating the Bolsheviks' tenure in power and how open was the decision process that led to its ratification in comparison with what came soon after its ratification in 1918. In this chapter I am largely unconcerned with the particularities of the treaty, the quite intriguing dimensions of the negotiations, or the profound significance for our understanding of the ways Russian foreign policy was and was not that of a conventional great power at the very dawn of the Soviet period.

Rather, in this section I describe the political processes by which the Bolsheviks reached agreement to get out of the war. I am not the first to do so. These have been described well in standard accounts. Historians of the period have also provided clear accounts of the active debates that took place, primarily among the Bolsheviks themselves, concerning the negotiations with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk. But the story pays retelling in some detail both because these debates were over what was literally a life-or-death matter with respect to the survival of Soviet power and because relatively recent research has highlighted the stark contrast between these debates and what follows in the ensuing seventy years. Historians and political scientists have similarly depicted the process of narrowing the selectorate that takes place in the years 1917 to 1921 that culminates in the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921. It is then that the famous Article 7 was adopted prohibiting factions that results in the Bolsheviks in power resembling the narrow conspiratorial party for power seizure that Lenin advocated in What's to Be Done, published in 1902. That evolution is covered subsequently (pp. 35–37).

In the pages that follow immediately the story is one of shifting coalitions, threats to resign and actual resignations, strategic voting, and sharply polarized views and rhetoric—the stuff of which in countries even with very large selectorates are considered conventional politics. In these respects, the decisions culminating in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk are comparable to the procedures observed by standard-issue oligarchies with quite small selectorates. The Bolsheviks operated with clear majoritarian procedural norms but severely limited the number of those who counted politically. Lenin was routinely outvoted. He had to threaten to quit to have his way on the most crucial votes. On the single most important vote relevant to the Russian decision to ratify the treaty, he failed to obtain a majority of the members of the Party Central Committee. Rather, he carried the day only because Trotsky and his coalition partners abstained. Other leading Party members also threatened to resign if their view was not accepted and did so when they lost.

From the moment they seized power in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks wanted to get out of the war. While a certain amount of posturing was involved, it is suggestive that the Declaration of Peace was the first act of the new government. Within a matter of weeks, the Germans and their allies had agreed to negotiate with the Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk about an armistice. Both sides agreed to send their representatives there to negotiate. (From the beginning, though, some Petrograd communists opposed "treaties with any of the imperialist states.") After some delays an armistice was agreed to in mid-December 1917 and negotiations over a peace treaty commenced on December 20.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691161488
• ISBN 13: 9780691161488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 344