The First Socialist Society, and: Russia: The Roots of Confrontation (review)

246 SAIS REVIEW The First Socialist Society. By Geoffrey Hosking. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. pp. 527. Russia: The Roots of Confrontation. By Robert V. Daniels. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. pp. 411. Reviewed by Katherine J. Hagedorn, SAIS MA. 1985 and former editor of the SAIS Review. Two more "definitive works" on the Soviet Union have appeared on the Soviet studies market, Geoffrey Hosking's The First Socialist Society and Robert V. Daniels's Russia: The Roots of Confrontation. They attempt to correct a perceived dearth of reliable information about the Soviet Union and its people. Although both authors are historians, each brings a different approach and emphasis to the topic. While Daniels spoonfeeds the reader careful comparisons and contrasts between the Soviet Union and the United States, attempting all the while to expose common misperceptions the average American might have about the average Soviet, Hosking concentrates on analyzing the often tragic origins and consequences of the Bolshevik revolution, with heavy emphasis (half the book) on Stalin's twenty-five year reign of terror. Regrettably, both books went to press early last year, before either author had a chance to adequately cover the momentous occasions of Konstantin Chernenko's death and the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev. The results of both approaches are useful and often fascinating. Each book caters to a distinct clientele, however. Daniels's book is geared toward a non-specialist American audience that understands the Soviet Union mostly within the context of U.S.-Soviet relations. For a Soviet scholar, though, Daniels's frequent comparisons between the Soviet Union and the United States become tiresome. Characterizing its staggering industrialization, he refers to the Soviet Union as "USSR, Incorporated." And attempting to describe the Russian bias against other nationalities in the Soviet Union, Daniels writes that "Soviet attitudes are dominated by a complacent sense of Russian superiority; they resemble the outlook ofAmerican WASPs prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s." Although such familiar points of reference are perhaps helpful to the novice, they are simplistic and often irritating to the student of Soviet studies. Hosking, by contrast, makes almost no comparisons between the Soviet Union and the United States, and his detailed descriptions and compelling analyses ofsuch upheavals as the debates of the 1920s and the Great Purge provide a gripping—if not wholly objective—picture of revolution and counterrevolution. Yet Hosking tends to focus his explanations of Bolshevik authoritarianism and Stalinist terror on the personalities ofthe political actors and on the conditions unique to that time. He blithely skips over a graver—and perhaps more obvious—explanation of the gross brutality of the three decades following the Bolshevik takeover: the political system itself. Hosking presents two theories to explain why Bolshevism became so extremely authoritarian, especially during the Civil war: (1) The severity of the war conditions forced the leaders to tighten their control; and (2) Lenin had an inherent harshness ofcharacter and the stressful conditions intensified it. It seems disingenuous not to mention the possibility that audioritarianism was implicit in Bolshevism —or at least in the Bolsheviks' developing perceptions of government. BOOK REVIEWS 247 In his analysis of the Great Purge, Hosking again ignores a systemic explanation . He begins his explanation by noting that "Stalin wished to destroy and humiliate all those who had ever opposed him or might conceivably oppose him" and that "in Soviet society of the 1930s, . . . the number of young, ambitious, and upwardly mobile people was unusually high. The purges opened for them dizzying opportunities. . . . Everyone was driven ineluctably on, the interrogators as well as the interrogated." These are fundamental and well-stated reasons. But what about the system? Doesn't the system reward the person who can simultaneously aggrandize himself and incriminate others? Such questions touch on political philosophy, and perhaps Hosking felt that subject to be tangential to his historical purpose. Daniels, for his part, notes that "Stalin's system could not have come into existence except in the wake of the Revolution, as the embodiment of the last stages of that unfortunate process," and, furthermore, that "the bases and structure of society that were formed in the Stalin era have been preserved to this...