Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917 (review)

296 SAIS REVIEW in many ways merely supplanted Britain (and later France and then Germany) as the Soviet Union's main antagonist in the West, and the reasons for that antagonism were largely ideological. If one reads the editorials in The Morning Post or The Times during the heyday of Anglo-Soviet friction, or reads the speeches of the British foreign secretary or secretary of war during that turbulent period, one will have a distinct sense ofdéjà vu on listening to Richard Perle, George Shultz, or Ronald Reagan today. The statements of Soviet leaders have not altered that much, either. The fact is that U.S.-Soviet relations represent the tip of a larger problem: There is and has long been a fundamental conflict of interests (and not merely of perceptions) between the Soviet Union and the capitalist West. This conflict has been evident to a greater or lesser extent since the October Revolution. Whether the resultant dynamics can be halted seems doubtful. The only period when the Russians refrained from aiding the forces of revolution within the less developed world was during World War II, at a time when both the Soviet regime and the Anglo-Saxon powers faced a common enemy. No such common threat exists now or is in prospect. The common fear of nuclear war is thankfully sufficient to deter resort to war but it has proved insufficiently strong to provide a solid foundation for a cooperative relationship based on a reconciliation of deeply held differences. Garthoffs magnum opus represents an enormous contribution to our understanding of what precisely happened during 1969—83; but to find the roots of the conflict, and thus some clue to its resolution, we must unfortunately look elsewhere. Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917. By Stephen F. Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. pp. 222. Reviewed by Sheila Bindman, MA. Candidate, SAIS. In a brief, revised collection of previously published essays, Stephen Cohen offers a broad survey as well as a revisionist interpretation of Stalinism and Anglo-American Sovietology. Utilizing the Russian historical tradition to help interpret Soviet development, and acknowledging the potential contributions and limitations of American approaches to Soviet studies, Rethinking the Soviet Experience broadly rejects the totalitarian, ideological interpretation of the changes Stalin wrought in Lenin's revolution. Cohen's challenge to traditional Sovietology begins with an analysis of the roots of the orthodox consensus and its ensuing intellectual crisis. Because of its birth during the height of the cold war and its overwhelming importance to American postwar political and strategic concerns, Western Sovietology was impelled to offer consensual answers and "lessons" in an ahistorical context. Such interpretive determinism, which could not account for changes in the Soviet system or alternatives to Stalin's terror, was undermined by dynamic revisionism in the 1970s. The author projects a bright intellectual future for a Sovietology that forsakes consensus for historical réévaluation. The remaining four essays in Cohen's book arejust such a reexamination of Soviet history. From the relationship between Bolshevism and Stalinism to the question of whether there were alternatives to Stalinism and finally to the future of Stalin's legacy, Cohen analyzes past and present Soviet politics and posits fresh interpretations of the Soviet reality. His rejection of the "continuity thesis" of BOOK REVIEWS 297 Soviet history is thorough and well articulated, and he notes the revolution that Stalinism represented while acknowledging its popular support and Russian /communist cultural préfigurations. Drawing on his own thorough biography of Bukharin, Cohen then explores communist alternatives to Stalin's Russia and the possibilities for reform inherent in Lenin's New Economic Policy and Bukharin's theoretical interpretations of Marxism. Although Cohen discusses the continuing appeal of post-revolutionary experimentation, he neglects the importance of authoritarian strains and characterizes Stalin's victory as due solely to his opponents' inept political maneuvering rather than to the power structure and leadership history of the Bolshevik party. This dual interpretive link is imperative when considering the lingering appeal of Stalin's legacy and the possibilities for true reform. In considering the future of the "Stalin question," Cohen discusses its historical, social, political, and moral aspects in view of...