Historians Flashcards
Richard Pipes
- anti-communist
- totalitarian school of thought
- survivor of the Holocaust
What does Pipes mainly argue about the Russian Revolution?
Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power by force
When did Pipes begin research?
His research was primarily shaped in the 1950s when the totalitarian school of thought was the dominant explanation for the Russian Revolution
When did the Revisionist school of thought emerge?
1980s
Whats the totalitarian position on the RR?
The Bolsheviks and the Soviets took over the Russian government bob force
Whats the revisionist position on the Russian Revolution?
the revolution was legitimised by the rising number of working-class Russians
What was the historical context of Richard Pipes’ scholarship?
- survivor of Holocaust
- Cold War
- Communist government in Poland where he was born
Sheila Fitzpatrick
- belongs to Revisionist school
What was the historical context of Sheila Fitzpatrick’s scholarship?
- the social movements of the 1960s
- the culture of Britain and the USSR
context 1945-1962
- tension between US and USSR
- war in Korea
- McCarthyism
context 1962-1972
- Cold War winding down
- social movements
Liberal / Conservative historians
- Pipes
- Robert Service
- Martin Malia
What do liberal or conservative historians claim?
the Russian Revolution failed because its ideology was deeply flawed
Orlando Figes
Figes argues from the revisionist pov, but is fairly conservative in his political persuasion (not far from Pipes), he re-emphasises the importance of key individuals.
How does Figes address criticisms of early revisionist accounts?
He re-emphasizes the importance of key individuals like Lenin, putting the ‘leaders back into history’
The fall of the former USSR in 1991 has also…
drastically changed the historiographical landscape
What is Robert Service’s view?
He offers a revised understanding of the totalitarian view
What has the collapse of communism and ‘vindication’ of capitalism led to?
a return to more conservative, liberal points of view in popular accounts of the revolution
what does the liberal approach seek to do?
demonise the Bolsheviks, dismissing ‘mass participatoin’
what do revisionists do?
they are critical of polarised views (Soviet and Liberal), seeking more complex analysis
what is our own bias?
Westerners follow the liberal interpretation where Russia seems ‘alien’ and we are repulsed
Examples of how easy it is to forget that leaders were NOT just one-sided and dogmatic
- Lenin’s romantic fling with Inessa Armand
2. Dzerzhinsky not only ran the Cheka, but also a large children’s charity!
How did Richard Pipes dismiss the revisionist account?
simply a rehash of the Soviet view
What does Figes argue about the revisionist view?
the broad notions they raise are now impossible to ignore as ‘we are all social historians now’
Western Marxist historians
- C. Hill,
- J. Reed
The Liberal View (dominant one espoused by Western historians)
- shaped by the prejudices of the Cold War so hostile to notions of socialism. Marxism and Communism
- generally interpret history ‘from above’, focus on ‘principal characters’ NOT the masses
Quote from Pipes sin his 2001 ‘communism - A brief history’
its ‘an introduction to Communism and, at the same time, its obituary’
what does Dmitri Volkogonov argue?
brutally condemns October Rev. Draws links between the actions of Lenin and the development of Stalin’s ‘totalitarian’ regime.
What is the context of Dmitri Volkogonov’s argument?
- freedom and need to expose the failings of the Communist Party and the sufferings it caused is a process of catharsis for many contemporary Russian writers
- he has extensive access to the Soviet archives
Prominent Liberal Historians
- B. Pares
- R. Pipes
- J.H Keep
- L. Shapiro
- M. Lynch
- D. Volkogonov
- A. Ulam
- R. Conquest
The Libertarian View
they see the role of the masses as the central element of causation; it was ordinary workers and peasants who brought about change.
How does Edward Acton summarise the Libertarian view?
the ‘goals for which they (the masses) strove were their own’
What is the libertarian view sometimes referred to as?
‘the theory of unfinished revolution’
Prominent Libertarian Historians
A. Berkman, M. Brinton
What did Revisionist / Social Historians use as well as scholarly research?
they borrowed modes of analysis borrowed from sociology, economics and politics
What do Revisionists emphasise overall?
the importance played by the ordinary people in creating the revolutionary nature of Russian society
How do Revisionists try to understand and read history?
‘from below’; outlining complexity, regional differences etc.
Prominent Revisionist Historians
- A. Rabinovitch
- R. Service
- S. Smith
- M. Ferro
- S. Fitzpatrick
- Bernard Williams
- C. Read
- O. Figes
- E. Acton
- S. Wheatcroft
Soviet view on the October Revolution
‘mass movement’ led by Lenin
Liberal historians on Revolution
just ‘a classic coup d’erat’ - seizure of power by a well organised minority without support of wider society
Revisionist historians on Revolution
more complex. Popular support of people.
Totalitarian view on RR
Lenin and Stalin as sole ‘directors’ of terror and control inflincted
Lynch quote
‘1917 did not mark a complete break with the past. Rather it was the replacement of one form of state authoritarianism with another’
