The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia (review)

This large volume consists of articles written by Daniels between 1953 and 2002. All of it, including the introduction, has been printed before. Although the chapters cover a large variety of topics, from Marxist theory to Soviet politics, they form a consistent whole that could be read as a history of the Soviet Union from its establishment to its disintegration. They all exhibit the author's erudition, common sense, and originality.

Daniels well-articulated view of history, which crops up again and again in this volume, lends a certain unity to the book. As a liberal and a moderate, he never simply denounced Vladimir Lenin's generation of revolutionaries as power-hungry, bloodthirsty monsters (à la Pipes) or attributed suffering in the Soviet Union to Marxist theory (à la Malia).¹ Since he recognizes contingency, he does not share the conservative belief that Lenin was inherent in Marxism and Joseph Stalin inherent in Leninism. Yet, unlike a younger generation of scholars, he has had no hesitation employing the concept of totalitarianism to describe at least some periods of Soviet history. He stresses that Soviet history was not an undifferentiated unit; different eras differed from one another greatly. By the same token, he refuses to view the "Soviet experiment" as a "failure," because, for him, the Revolution evolved quickly into something unforeseen.

Nor is he willing to reduce the entire history of the Soviet Union to a series of failures, since during the course of seven decades, Russian society was forced to reckon with the complexities of modernity, even if at an extremely high cost. Daniels repeatedly emphasizes that even though the Soviet Union industrialized, it remained "Russian," in every respect. History does not begin every year anew; concerns, issues, and behavior patterns reappear, even if sometimes in a different form under different circumstances. Although Daniels is well acquainted with Marxist theory, he does not give it much explanatory force in describing the behavior of Soviet leaders. He appears to argue (correctly) that politicians act first and find ideological justifications for their actions later.

Daniels continues to use concepts and approaches that were current in the 1950s but fell into disuse, such as Brinton's generalizations about revolutions (slightly revised by Daniels) and modernization theory as used by Black.² According to this view, "the Soviet experiment" was simply a way to industrialize the country and create a more or less educated and urbanized middle class.