The Apogee of Soviet Political Romanticism: Projects for Moral Renewal in Early Perestroika (1985–1989)

Abstract

This article analyses the early reforms of perestroika (1985–1989) that aimed to overcome the perceived moral crisis of Soviet society. A close study of the public debates of that time reveals three conflicting perspectives on morality. By situating these debates in the wider context of Soviet and Western intellectual history, this article argues that the Soviet liberal project was part of a broader phenomenon, namely, the apogee of political Romanticism in the USSR. This conclusion, in turn, sheds light on the specificities of the Soviet liberal moral project, which inspired Gorbachev’s reform strategy from 1987 onwards.

Notes

1 I hereafter use the terms ‘communist’, ‘nationalist’ and ‘liberal’ following a common and convenient usage to designate the great ideological divides of the late Soviet Union. These labels should be used with caution, however. One must keep in mind that they are not exhaustive, that they were not necessarily assumed by those they designate (many nationalists prefer to consider themselves as ‘patriots’, for example), and that they do not necessarily correspond to the definition of the related terms in Western social science. Further in this article, I will address some of the differences between Western and Soviet liberals at the time of perestroika.

2 In Russian, morality is usually designated by the words nravstvennost' and moral' (respectively formed from Slavic and Latin roots). The Great Soviet Encyclopedia presents these words as synonyms. In the political discourse at the time of perestroika, the use of the word dukhovnost' (which means ‘spirituality’ but does not necessarily have religious overtones) is used in a very similar way, so I consider hereafter that it belongs to the same concept of ‘morality’. The word etika (ethics), for its part, has a distinct signification in that it designates a field of philosophy. It was not commonly used in the political discourse under study here.

3 This rise is notable if we look at the successive Party programmes. The word ‘morality’ appears more often in the third, adopted in 1986, than in the second, adopted 25 years earlier. It was barely mentioned in the first, in 1919 (Gusejnov 1988, p. 24).

4 In addition to political science, this study challenges the prevailing views in other fields in which morality in the Soviet Union is discussed, such as history and sociology. The aim is to offer a constructive approach to analysing morality, whereas historians and sociologists have tended too often to limit themselves to discussing Soviet moral discourse as a cynical political performance concealing the authentic moral concerns expressed in the private sphere (Shlapentokh 1989; Kotkin 1995; Kharkhordin 1999).

5 This seems to be the underlying assumption of the works of Philip Boobbyer (2005) and Leon Aron (2012), who both mention an impressive number of occurrences of morality as a topic of discourse during perestroika and before, but who do not distinguish between its different meanings and purposes.

6 ‘Glasnost’’, which can be translated as ‘transparency’, designates the policy of relaxation of censorship advanced by Gorbachev during perestroika.

7 An ideal-type, following Max Weber, stresses the characteristics of the most common cases of a given phenomenon. It should be considered as a heuristic device rather than an exact and exhaustive depiction of reality. In the present case the different perspectives, although mutually exclusive in principle, were sometimes used in combination.

8 The breaking point was the January 1987 Central Committee Plenum, during which Gorbachev emphasised the need for political reforms, calling for democratisation and ‘socialist pluralism’. The nature of this shift is debated in the literature on Gorbachev and his reforms. For Malia (1994), it was a pragmatic move dictated by the failure of the 1985–1986 reforms, neither a truly radical nor a fully conscious shift in policy. In stating that it was both, I am following the interpretation of scholars of perestroika such as Archie Brown (1996), Richard Sakwa (1991) and George Breslauer (2002). The last, notably, convincingly argues that the 1987 shift cannot only be ascribed to the failure of the previous round of reforms, because in similar circumstances both Khrushchev and Brezhnev chose to strike a compromise between reformist and conservative measures (Breslauer 2002, p. 236). Gorbachev’s choice of a comprehensive radicalised programme can mostly be explained by his personality and the convictions he shared with his closest associates.

9 This contempt for political Romanticism is typical of the discourse of the post-Soviet Russian political elite, including some former perestroika activists. Anatoly Sobchak, for example, who became the mayor of Leningrad on the crest of citizen mobilisation in 1989–1991, would later dismiss the ‘romanticism’ of that time as symptomatic of a lack of ‘political talent’ (Sobchak 1995, p. 40). On a more sympathetic note, the historian Vladislav Zubok describes as romantic the idealism and optimism of the post-war generation intelligentsia whose ‘grand dreams’ inspired perestroika but proved to be anachronistic ‘illusions’ (Zubok 2009, p. 358).

10 Hence the systematic use thereafter of the capital letter for Romanticism, as a reference to the ideological tradition. For that matter, it should be underlined that my argument about the Romantic aspirations of early perestroika does not entail any judgment regarding the personality of the political leaders and intellectuals under study, who might or might not be ‘romantic’ in the colloquial sense of being psychologically inclined towards emotive and impractical conceptions.

11 Löwy and Sayre show this romantic dimension in the works of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and György Lukács. For a classical interpretation of Romanticism as the basis of the ‘counter-Enlightenment’, see Berlin (1997).

12 The conjunction of socialism and Romanticism in late Soviet culture was the topic of a colloquium organised by the Programme in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Princeton University in 2014 on the theme ‘Sotsromanticism. Romantic Subversions of Soviet Enlightenment: Questioning Socialism’s Reason’. On this occasion, the historian Courtney Doucette (2014) specifically addressed the question of Romantic sensibility during perestroika.

13 The Great Soviet Encyclopedia can be considered one of the most authoritative documents of the USSR. As one historian wrote: ‘The Great Soviet Encyclopedia served not merely a descriptive but also a normative function in the Soviet “Enlightenment”: it defined the boundaries of knowledge, certified the validity of scientific theories included in its volumes’ (Gerovitch 2002, p. 103).

14 ‘Moral’’, in Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1974, vol. 16, pp. 559–61).

15 ‘Moral’’, in Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1974, vol. 16, p. 559).

16 ‘Moral’’, in Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1974, vol. 16, p. 560).

17 This is in line with the historian Stephen Kotkin’s reflection on Stalinism: ‘in the end, though, the main reason that the USSR needs to be reincorporated into European history is that Stalinism constituted a quintessential Enlightenment utopia, an attempt, via the instrumentality of the state, to impose a rational ordering on society, while at the same time overcoming the wrenching class divisions brought about by nineteenth-century industrialisation’ (Kotkin 1995, p. 364).

18 For the historian Vladislav Zubok (2009, p. 22), the transmission of the ‘moral ethos’ of the old Russian intelligentsia to the new Soviet intelligentsia in the 1930s and 1940s was an ‘unintended result’ of the Stalinist educational system. Throughout his book, however, he argues that there was a direct transmission of ideals from the old Russian intelligentsia through figures such as Pasternak, but does not provide empirical evidence of such transfer. A study of the poet Tvardovsky’s ideas from the 1930s to the 1950s suggests instead that the Romantic values that inspired de-Stalinisation were already current under Stalin (Pinsky 2017), illustrating how the Soviet system was undermined by criticism based on the standards it professed.

19 ‘Nravstvennost’’, in Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (Moscow, Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1954, vol. 30, pp. 205–7).

20 Solzhenitsyn did not directly take part in the debates of perestroika, but his ideas were very influential and the first official Soviet publication of chapters of The Gulag Archipelago in Novyi mir (Solzhenitsyn 1989) had a great impact. His first major intervention came as late as 1991, when he published a programmatic book, Rebuilding Russia. He advocated the creation of a Russian Union comprising only the Slavic republics (including northern Kazakhstan) and dedicated to the preservation of Russian culture. He expressed deep suspicion towards Western parliamentary democracies, in which he saw a lack of spiritual independence and ‘the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests’ (Solzhenitsyn 1991, p. 79). Instead, he argued in favour of an authoritarian transition period that would allow for a moral renewal from below, from the local and individual level. Faithful to his moral vision, he insisted that the awakening of conscience was far more important than any institutional reform: ‘the structure of the state is secondary to the spirit of human relations. Given human integrity, any honest system is acceptable, but given human rancour and selfishness, even the most sweeping democracies would become unbearable’ (Solzhenitsyn 1991, p. 49).

21 In fact, many intellectuals were inspired by Solzhenitsyn’s moral teaching on the awakening of conscience without adhering to his conservative and nationalist agenda, notably the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, who approvingly referred to Solzhenitsyn in his essay The Power of the Powerless (Havel 1985), in which he called to ‘live within the truth’. This was also true for numerous Soviet liberals who were active during perestroika, such as the pundit Yuri Karyakin, who eulogised Solzhenitsyn without taking a nationalist stance (Karyakin 2007).

22 As a rule, the issue of confronting the past was generally treated in public discourse by throwing the blame at others. The conservative nationalist organisation Memory (Pamyat’) staged an important demonstration in Moscow in 1987 to denounce the responsibility of Jews and foreigners in the oppression of the Russian people. The very same year, the organisation Memorial was created on an informal basis by Soviet liberals to commemorate the crimes of Stalinism. When it was officially registered two years later, most of its members insisted on drawing a clear line between persecutors and victims (Pomerants 1989).

23 These intellectuals are designated ‘liberals’ in most studies about perestroika, both in Russian and English. It must be emphasised, however, that this label does not imply an exact match with the Western canon of liberalism, which is often opposed to socialism. This was not the case with many Soviet liberals who defended the reformation of socialism at least until 1990. For my part, I call these intellectuals ‘liberals’ following the ‘summative conception’ put forward by the political theorist Duncan Bell, who suggests that the liberal tradition includes ‘the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, across time and space’ (Bell 2014, p. 688). This is clearly the case of Soviet liberals, whose ideas—representative democracy, market economy, constitutionalism—were widely considered liberal in the West, but who did not claim this label (at least, not openly), and did not fully correspond to the Western liberal canon, notably in regard to policies on morality, as will be shown further. As a reminder of this nuance, they are systematically designated in the current article as ‘Soviet liberals’.

24 A poll held between March 1988 and January 1989 established a list of the 50 most popular Soviet essayists. Among the first 20, there were 14 Soviet liberals (Nikolai Shmelyov, Andrei Nuykin, Gavriil Popov, Yuri Karyakin, Fyodor Burlatsky, Otto Latsis, Andrei Strelyanny, Arkady Vaksberg, Gennady Lisichkin, Igor Klyamkin, Yuri Afanasiev, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Vitaly Korotich, Yuri Burtin), two liberal nationalists (Vasily Selyunin, Yuri Chernichenko) and a conservative nationalist (Valentin Rasputin, in eighteenth position). Gorbachev, for his part, reached thirty-ninth position (Kliger 1989, p. 242). This poll is not representative of the Soviet population in general, but it gives a good idea of the ideological proclivity of the educated population of Moscow, who would later play a decisive role in the political life emerging in 1989.

25 This is exemplified in Popov’s criticism of the administrative command system, which will be studied further.

26 Afanasiev was echoing the mobilisation of 1985–1986 against the diversion of Siberian rivers, which I mentioned earlier.

27 The literary critic Yuri Burtin objected to the conservative nationalist writer Valentin Rasputin’s diagnosis of the moral decay: ‘why should we proceed only from ourselves … when what is at stake is the “people” and deep disruptions in the moral physiognomy of human masses? The writer [Rasputin]—and he is not alone—seems to think that the demands one has to himself and to society are mutually exclusive’ (Burtin 1987, p. 232). In a similar vein, the historian Leonid Batkin wrote: ‘whatever is usually said, the main problem is not the “inertia inside of us”, it is not that everyone should “start perestroika from himself”. There are true psychological observations in this, of course, but we are not such fools as to turning politics into psychology and to hope to win the fight against the mighty bureaucratic machine with self-education’ (Batkin 1988b, p. 190).

28 Also translated as ‘command-administrative system’. For my part, I follow the translation by Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinsky (2001, pp. 105–6).

29 For example, Yuri Afanasiev stated (1987, p. 59): ‘according to me, the moment has come of the agony of the administrative system of command, to use G. K. Popov’s vocabulary’, and Yuri Burtin wrote: ‘it is obvious that this system (which G. Popov aptly called the administrative system in the April edition of Nauka i zhizn’) is not interested in perestroika’ (Saraskina et al. 1988, p. 23).

30 It is notably the case of Andrei Sakharov, who wrote (1988, p. 122) that bureaucracy goes along various ‘negative phenomena’, such as ‘an administrative command structure of management with a mechanic subordination of mid-level players to the higher bodies’. In June 1991, a journalist acknowledged: ‘the expression “administrative system” has become so established and pervasive that we use it without remembering it was created by G. K. Popov’ (‘Novye knigi v PIKe’, Demokraticheskaya Rossiya, 11, 17, 1991, p. 16).

31 Archie Brown insists that perestroika was driven from above at least until 1989, but he acknowledges that ‘many reformist concepts are to be encountered first in the writings of scholarly specialists, and only later in the speeches of Party leaders’ (Brown 2007, p. 110).

32 Andrzej Walicki makes a similar argument in his book on the history of Marxism. After positing that the notion of freedom underlying Gorbachev’s discourse ‘was a commonsense, liberal notion’, he argues that this liberal notion was not accepted in Soviet society because of a ‘moralistic fundamentalism that precluded an appreciation of freedom as an autonomous value distinct from moral or material satisfaction’ (Walicki 1995, p. 539). This illiberal character, he continues, ‘is familiar from the history of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, especially those with a populist socialist persuasion. … They confused individual liberty with a moral order and social justice that provided everybody with opportunities for unlimited self-realization’ (Walicki 1995, p. 546).

33 In addition to Timofeyev’s article (2004) about Soviet Russia, this argument can be found in Jerzy Szacki’s book about Poland, in which the intellectuals who emphasised moral and social change as a condition for personal flourishing are described as ‘protoliberals’, because their ‘collectivist’ thinking prevented them from elaborating a ‘mature’ form of liberalism (Szacki 1995, p. 117) based on state neutrality in the conflict over morality (Szacki 1995, p. 197).

34 This follows Joachim Zweynert’s conclusions in his study on the economic thought of the liberals of perestroika: ‘in the last years of the Soviet Union the hard core of Soviet ideology—that the country had been on the holy road to the wholesome society—was replaced by the conviction that it had, in fact, been moving towards a dead end. What was not altered, however, was the notion of history as a purposeful process. The Soviet telos was replaced by a liberal telos’ (Zweynert 2006, p. 191). This statement, however, should be qualified to emphasise that the Soviet liberal ‘telos’ was not typical of contemporary liberalism, as I have shown, but rather of Romantic ideals widespread in the late Soviet Union.

35 ‘Zhestkim kursom … Analiticheskaya zapiska Leningradskoi assotsiatsii sotsial’no-ekonomicheskikh nauk’, Vek XX i mir, 6, 1990, pp. 15–9.

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Guillaume Sauvé

Guillaume SauvÉ, Carleton University, EURUS Richcraft Hall, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada. Email: [email protected]