[.ca] Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (ISBN 0684823136)

From Amazon.com:
If the Bolshevik revolution shook the world, the 74-year reign of socialists in the former Soviet Union certainly changed it. Now that the rule is over--at least for the moment--historians are beginning the process of placing the experience into its political, social and global contexts. Martin Malia, a former history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has contributed mightily to that process with this comprehensive look at the entire period of socialist rule, from its origins to the roots of its collapse. He leaves no conceptual stone unturned, providing lively insights to ideas and ideologies while offering a complete summary of the complex history.

Important issue:
Marxist critics of Malia try to argue that Marxism is really a fine theory, it's just that the communist revolution needed to come about in a more industrialized country like Germany, as Marx had hoped, or Britian or the US. This is such a howler. First of all, socialism failed just as badly in East Germany. The difference in average material welfare in East vs West Germany was as stark a comaprison as one could ask for. Indeed, it took the huge Berlin Wall to keep the victims in their hellish prison. Besides, didn't anybody ever think to ask Marx, if your economic system is going to be even more productive than capitalism, why is it that you need capitalism first to build up the economic base? If socialism is so great, why can't industrialization take place under it from the get go? The truth is that socialism needed capitalism to accumulate all the capital equipment so that the socialists could then live off of it for a while, all the while eating it up and leaving little or nothing for the future to live on. Capitalism produces and accumulates, socialism consumes and destroys.

Impeccably Reasoned and VERY Aptly Named:
This book, along with Richard Pipes' THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, ranks as one of the two most useful and enlightening treatments of the subject. Malia is no novice when it comes to Russian history, having written ALEXANDER HERZEN AND THE BIRTH OF RUSSIAN SOCIALISM many years ago. Unlike many other historians, who tend to euphemize when it comes to the subject of the USSR, Malia has the courage to refer to absurdities as absurdities. Other historians quite often discuss Soviet internal terrorism and irrational economic policies as things that HAD to be done, due to a variety of circumstances--as if these policies were either rational or sensible. Malia's analysis is far more astute; it demonstrates repeatedly that these "circumstances" were the RESULTS of trying to follow an irrational ideology and the fantastic economic policies that it dictated. One simply cannot understand the Soviet experience without emphasizing these points. Similarly, Malia shows that Stalinism was not an aberration, but an inevitable consequence of Lenin's model of government. The only way to keep such a state going was by terror, as Malia shows us. If the N.E.P. had been allowed to continue, the Leninist form of socialism in Russia would eventually have lapsed into Social Democratic reformism instead of the one-party dictatorship that alone could march along Lenin's path. It's no coincidence that either terror or economic collapse (or some mixture of both) have resulted everywhere the Leninist model has been tried; and Malia's most valuable contribution is showing us how and why this is so, and cannot be otherwise. As he pointed out, "socialism leads not to an assault on the specific abuses of 'capitalism' but to an assault on reality..." Of course, idle coffee-house intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky spend their lives trying to escape reality; for them, this is the whole point. Reality is too painful for them because it is a glaring reminder of the fact that they spend their hours reading and writing while others toil.

The Anti-Socialism Anti Revisionism of Martin Malia:
Two theories--totalitarianism and revisionism--have emerged in Sovietology, attempting to define what comprises the correct application of socialism, and the particular aspects of Soviet socialism. Martin Malia, in his text The Soviet Tragedy-A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, contends that the Soviet regime was logically totalitarian because totalitarianism is the natural outcome of any attempt to realize textbook Marxism. Stalinism thus represented the peak of the Soviet experiment. Malia argues that later regimes were merely watered-down versions of either Stalin's "hard" war communism or "soft" NEP-style market reforms of the 1920's. He focuses the argument on socialism's inherent flaws. Malia therefore opposes various revisionist claims that Russia, her leaders, and their faulty interpretations of Marxism led to the demise of Soviet socialism. These revisionist arguments imply that under different circumstances full integral socialism could have worked. Malia organizes his book around the major trends of the Soviet experience, while consistently attacking each revisionist claim. He clarifies points, separates utopianism from sober reality, and examines the political and economic costs of socialist policies. Because revisionism views the Marxist ideal sympathetically, Malia's anti-socialism arguments are essentially anti-revisionist.

Malia's determinist argument leaves out social history:
Ideology takes center stage in Martin Malia's comprehensive history of the Soviet period entitled The Soviet Tragedy. Malia's book exhaustively analyzes the Soviet "experiment" from its Marxist roots to its final implosion. Looking down at the "rubble" of socialism, Malia extends his argument of ideology combined with the central role of the Communist Party in crafting a top-down historical approach to Soviet history. Seen as an "ideocratic Partocracy" in the words of the author, indicate the dependence on ideology coupled with the dictatorship of the Party form the vehicle through which socialism operated. Published in 1994, Malia crafts a significant historical exploration into the exact nature of the Soviet Union. Malia places much emphasis on the single-track delivery of integral socialism from which the Communist idea is derived into nationalization, collectivization, and planning (514). Lenin's vision encompassing socialism in maximalist terms also fills the Soviet state into the totalitarian mold. Communist Russia turned totalitarian because of its socialism, argues Malia. The author's argument fits the familiar mode of casting Stalin as the builder of socialism in centralizing all the power of the Party into his own hands, representing the peak of socialist power. Malia focuses on the continuity of the Soviet leadership from Lenin to Gorbachev. He renders the Stalin question obsolete because socialism's utopian essence, distinctly non-capitalist, was present before Stalin and continued through and after him. Thus to argue in favor of Bukharin, leads only to futility because building socialism excludes any hope of a market or NEP activity. Malia focuses his argument on the choice of integral socialism and its determinate "genetic code," thus leaving a single trajectory of socialism headlined with War Communism and Lenin's NEP (16). The author asserts that the whole of Soviet history alternated between hard and soft communism exemplified in these two primary events. Again the role of ideology is central to his analysis. Because the regime was born into War Communism followed by the retreat of NEP, the utopian dream of universal equality could only lead to self-destruction. The Marxist-Leninist worldview progressed historically as the paradoxical pursuit of human equality through the "primitive military means of the partocracy." Malia sees the idea of Soviet socialism in Lenin the Founder as "ideological illusion and raw coercion," (494). Central to his argument, then is the military means to build communism. Malia writes, "From this 'original sin' flowed all of the succeeding acts of coercion, starting with the revolution from above of 1929-1933, continuing with the purges, and culminating with the postwar restoration of the system," (495). In writing the The Soviet Tragedy, Malia attacks traditional Sovietology that views the regime through a nearly opaque lens of capitalist political ideology and social science methodology. Malia answers traditional Sovietology with this impressive scholarship written solely from the point of view of politics inextricably paired with ideology. The complete lack of social or economic research could be seen as a deficiency by some. However, Malia should take the credit he deserves in penning the history of socialism in Russia as a comprehensive "experiment." Because the experiment failed for its ideology lends credibility to Malia's analytical approach. In "reconceptualizing" Soviet history, Malia critiques Western historiagraphy. Consequently, many of Malia's sources come from abroad. The author interpretation of the whole Soviet history may set a benchmark for an objective understanding of the fallen regime's political history. Social historians and economists may probe deeper into aspects of societal oppression and economic depression. In doing so, Malia's "objective" analysis may serve as an important catalyst for future historical scholarship. Indeed, the enigmatic qualities of Russia must be transcended for any unbiased scholarly exploration.

Great Anti-Soviet propaganda:
This book is based on two premises: 1. Marxism is bound to fail becasue it is inhrently flawed; 2. What other Sovietologists (Soviet and Western) have written is wrong. The author alone seems to know the truth that the rest of the world seems to have missed out on. The first is a debatable point. There is some question about the rise of Socialism in Russia actually being Marxist. The second point just makes me cringe. The author treats what most other authors take as major features and treats tham as minor points. For example, the Bolsheviks started on their radical program knowing that Marx had said that socialism would first come forth in an advanced industrial nation like Germany. The Bolsheviks hoped that their revolution would spread to other countries who would then support the Bolsheviks. As history has shown, that was not the case. Most authors on the subject point out that this was the starting point of the Bolshevik revolution and they had to adopt oth! ! er methods when it became obvious that the world-wide worker's revolution was not forthcoming. All in all, I did not find this book very helpful in my search for understanding about the Soviet Union.