The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991

by Martin Malia

Book Overview

"The Soviet Tragedy is an essential coda to the literature of Soviet studies...Insofar as he] returns the power of ideology to its central place in Soviet history, Malia has made an enormous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0029197953
• ISBN13: 9780029197950
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 575 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

An excellent polemic

Although some readers might find the book's polemical style a bit off-putting, _The Soviet Tragedy_ is an excellent overview of both the failure of socialism in twentieth-century Russia and the failure of an earlier generation of Russian scholars to recognize the centrality of ideology to shaping the Bolshevik "experiment." While Malia's rhetorical atacks on the "revisonists" (i.e. social historians) of the 1970s and 1980s are, at times, a bit heated, he is correct in asserting that their own ideological fixation on demonstrating the "legitimacy" of 1917 and the Soviet regime's capacity for reform blinded them to the fundamental impossibility of reengineering society on the basis of Marx's utopian blueprint. An essential book for those already familiar with the broad outlines of 20th century Russian history.

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.

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.

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.