Russia

by Harrison E. Salisbury

A review of Russia from czars to commissars and current economic trends

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia

Paperback

First published December 1, 1972

About the author

Harrison E. Salisbury (November 14, 1908 - July 5, 1993) was a long time reporter and editor at The New York Times.

Earlier in his career he had worked for the United Press, which he joined after earning a B.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1930. He began his career in journalism as a part-time reporter for the Minneapolis Journal during 1928-29.

Although he served in many different positions and places during his long career at the Times, Mr. Salisbury is perhaps most famous for his work as Moscow correspondent, covering the U.S.S.R. during the early years of the Cold War. After serving as the Times' Moscow Bureau Chief from 1949 to 1954, he returned to the U.S. and wrote a series of articles for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1955.

He spent a great deal of time concentrating on Asia during his later years at the Times, covering the Vietnam War as well as many different issues and events having to do with China.

Reviews

[Carl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tore the book in half by accident. Boring and arcane, I don’t care. This challenged my will to live.

[superduperconnor · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty outdated (was written in the 60’s) but still some relevant points. does Russia have more in common with the East or the West? which would it rather be a part of? i would love to go to a market and see a bear

[Marta E C R · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book of Russian history (by a journalist) through 1965. Given what is currently going on in the U.S., I found this passage sounding worrisomely familiar: “In the Soviet Union the problems of political change are handled secretively and mysteriously, for in the Soviet Union power is vested in what constitutes a cabal or oligarchy with no clear-cut institutional, traditional or constitutional method for transferring or conferring authority.”

[Lidya · Rating 3 out of 5]

"An introduction to Russia, from Czars to Commissars, with emphasis on the factors that suggest the future."

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book I found from a New York Times reporter about Russia from 1965. It’s more of a long magazine piece than a book (my copy is 134 pages) but it provides a snapshot in time of a mid-1960s view of the Soviet Union that was nearly 50 years after the revolution and 20 years after the devastation of World War II. The author’s basic premise is that there is much continuity in Russian history and that the Soviet period is part of that rather than a dramatic break. Russia has continually had a weak state beset by foreign intervention and the central government has used its power to maintain its strength, often to the detriment of the common person. While Stalin was the latest to use repressive measures to move Russia from a weak post-World War I state to an international player by the 1950s, that era of fear and the suppression of consumer demand could not last. The author relies upon the fact that Stalin’s successors had to let up on the repression and to attempt to satisfy consumer demand to show that Soviet society was evolving in a more Western/European direction: a rising technical class with little interest in ideology demanded more consumer goods and had more liberal attitudes towards expression and looked West in terms of the economy and popular culture. Notably absent are any political notions of this more liberal technical class – whether looking to Western political institutions or developing their own. This may provide a clue that the post-Soviet Russia would import Western capitalist practices and popular culture but was not as fertile ground for Western political arrangements.

Internationally, the author highlights the meaning of the Soviet-Chinese competition, both in the communist and developing worlds. Soviet Russia wanted to show developing nations that its state-centric economic development model was superior to the West’s and that it had produced significant results in a relatively short period. However, the dilemma became that as the Soviet economy developed and its citizens enjoyed a better quality of life, it became more like the developed Western world and had less in common with the revolutionary, agrarian, and under-developed states that it wanted to curry favor with. China, however, had more in common with the developing world and was ideologically purer allowing it to take a firmed stand on issues such as confronting the capitalist west. This competition constrains and colors Russia’s internal and external dynamics – more resources for foreign aid and development versus improvements for Soviet citizenry.

The author does a good job of keeping the analysis non-ideological. The descriptions of the Soviet economy, especially the problems with agriculture, are based on generally understood economic terms – state capitalism, regulation, state power to collectivize agriculture. It avoids discussing Marxist theory of surplus theory of value or other terms. The international competition is not about class struggle or a brotherhood of socialist nations but rather standard international relations – who’s up, who’s down and how are they interacting.

In 1965, if one were to read this book, one would be forgiven if they though the future of the Soviet Union was a continued advance towards liberalization of the economy and society; that the technical class would move towards a model we see in China – capitalist development with a veneer of communist ideology, with or without the Party. That by the 1980s, with more resources and more demands, Soviet society would be very much like Western Europe. However, the post-Soviet state lost the communist ideology and had a bad experience with Western political institutions, which it was not prepared to implement, and the free-for-all capitalism that consolidated to what we have today.