Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum, and: Rossiia i Zapad: Formirovanie vneshnepoliticheskikh stereotipov v soznanii rossiiskogo obshchestva pervoi poloviny XX veka (review)

There are few dichotomies more ideologically loaded than that of "Russia and the West." For the past two centuries, the various constructions of Russian national identity have rested on this dichotomy, measuring themselves against the "West," either positively – by aspiring to its norms, life-style, and prosperity – or negatively, by rejecting it as a bastion of materialism antithetical to the spirit of the Russian people. For its part, "Europe," too, has frequently constructed its identity in terms of this same dichotomy, with Russia functioning as what Gayatri Spivak calls a "self-consolidating other,"¹ whose very lack of politesse, liberty or economic individualism throws into relief what are deemed to be the quintessential features of "Europe." Within this construction, the history of "Europe" – invariably shorn of its northern, southern and eastern regions – is vaingloriously equated with the heritage of "Western civilization." To begin critically to engage this dichotomy, we need to understand its historical formations, and the two books under review make a start in this direction: the one by examining Western perceptions of Russia, the other by examining Russian perceptions of the West.

In his ambitious and thought-provoking book, Martin Malia takes as his subject "the West's judgments about Russia as a power … but even more as a civilization" (9). He challenges the view that Russia was perennially seen by Europeans as a despotic, alien, and threatening place, arguing that the relation of Russia to the West (a term he uses without inverted commas) evolved through four distinct phases. The first began with Peter the Great's victory against Sweden at Poltava in 1709 and ended with the Congress of Vienna. In this period Russia – in the guise of the "enlightened despotism" of Peter, Catherine II, and Alexander I – displayed a benign visage to the West. In the second, which climaxed under Nicholas I, Western perceptions changed dramatically, Russia becoming viewed as the "gendarme of Europe." In the third, which opened with the Great Reforms and closed in 1917, the West's negative image was progressively attenuated to the point where, by the early 20th century, most observers viewed Russia as an integral, though no longer idealized, part of Europe. The fourth phase corresponds to the Soviet era and defies clear characterization, since it reproduced both the idealization of the 18th century and the denigration of the early 19th. In sum, Malia argues that the West's sense of difference from Russia registered dramatic fluctuations in intensity across three centuries, rarely attaining the acute pitch of the Cold War years. In broad terms, his thesis is novel and persuasive, but, as we shall see, in each of the four phases the author tends to flatten out complexities that contradict his strong thesis.

In respect to the first phase, Malia argues that Peter's triumph in the Great Northern War – on the coat-tails of the military revolution that had been advancing eastward since the early 16th century – led to Russia becoming a founding member of the modern concert of Europe. Up to that time, she had been perceived as a slavish political despotism; but now, as she opened herself to the Enlightenment, she "became an object...