Suny, The Soviet Experiment (1998)
Questions for discussion
Chapter 1, The Imperial Legacy
Based upon Suny’s discussion—
Be prepared to outline the geographic factors shaping Russian history.
Describe the population makeup (demographic characteristics) of the Russian Empire in 1900.
Describe the relative size of the major social estates (sosloviia) in 1897.
What generalizations characterize Russian peasant agriculture circa 1900?
Was life for peasants improving or becoming worse?
How was village life organized, and what generalizations characterize peasant culture?
What generalizations characterize the nature of Russian autocracy circa 1900? What was the role of the autocrat?
What generalizations characterize the nature and the function of the nobility circa 1900? In what ways did the politics of the nobility seem to change in the early 20th century?
What generalizations characterize the nature and function of the state bureaucracy? Of the Orthodox Church?
Suny quotes Gramsci’s famous remark that in Russia "the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous." What does this mean?
When did industrialization begin to "take off" in Russia, and what factors seem to have enabled this industrialization?
What factors seemed to stunt the development of industrial capitalism in Russia, and what function did the state have in the industrialization process?
Did Russia become an industrial capitalist society? Explain….
What is meant by the term "intelligentsia"?
Who were the "Westernizers," who were the "Slavophiles," and what were their politics?
What factors seem to have "pushed" elements of the intelligentsia towards championing revolution and violent rebellion?
How (towards what ends) did Plekhanov use/ take up the ideas of Marx? Suny notes three reasons that Marxism was attractive to Russian radicals—what are these reasons? (see pp. 20-21)
What seems to have characterized Lenin’s personality?
What were the main points made in Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? ?
Why did the RSDLP split in 1903?
How does Suny characterize Nicholas II?
What were the aims of Russia’s liberals before 1905?
How had industrial growth and the up-and down cycle of the capitalist economy effected Russian society in the 1880s-early 1900s?
What factors led to the 1905 Revolution? For Suny, what were the most important results of the 1905 Revolution?
Suny asks why support for tsarism eroded "so quickly in the last two decades of its existence," and says that historians are divided on this question. What are the two general "schools" of though on this question? Is Suny and "optimist" or a "pessimist"?
(Which argument strikes you as stonger?)
What characterized Russia’s foreign and domestic policy during the Stolypin era?
What does Suny mean when he discusses a "crisis at the top" and a "crisis at the bottom" of Russian society in 1911-14? What changes were occurring among the urban and rural lower classes? What evidence is there is growing labor unrest in 1911-1914?
How does Suny explain Russia’s decision to go to war in 1914?
What problems faced Russia in prosecuting the war? What kinds of problems did the war itself create (or aggravate)?
Why did the tsarist regime’s direction of the war effort further undermine support for tsarism?
What is Suny’s main point in this chapter?