#7 - JRL 8304 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004
From: Irina Pavlova <ivpavlova@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: 8300-Pipes vs.Lukin
Dear David Johnson,
I would like to ask you to post my letter in your Russia List. I am Irina Pavlova, a Doctor of Historical Sciences, the author of two books on Mechanism of Stalin's Power (in Russian) and numerous articles.
Thank you in advance.
With best regards,
sincerely yours
Irina Pavlova.
This is my text:
In my letter a response to the comments of Alexander Lukin “Pipes Can’t See the Trees for the Forest” I least would like to defend R. Pipes. He does not need a defense. I also would not like to argue with A. Lukin personally. I would like only to draw the attention to the main problem in contemporary studies of Russian, Past and Present, both in Russia and the US, which has become so apparent in Lukin’s comments. Lukin criticizes R. Pipes that “he takes a characteristically ideological approach to current events in Russia, forcing the facts to conform to his preco! nceived conclusions.”
Pipes is a Westerner and he analyses the Russian situation, using the main values of Western civilization; namely, private property and freedom are the foundations of his scientific approach to Russian history. So Pipes came to this basic assumption that “over the course of Russian history, a unique, distinctly non-Western form of society has emerged in this country with a singular political culture that has changed little over time and now poses an obstacle to democratization.” In his comments, Lukin considers such an approach as an ideological one; however, he does not propose any other approach instead of Pipes’.
According to Lukin’s opinion, “specialists on Russia both here and abroad would do well to avoid sweeping generalizations about history and the current situation until they have made a thorough study of the facts. Without such careful preparations, their conclusions contain little of merit.” Of course, a thorough study of the facts is necessary yet not enough. Facts by themselves, without scientific interpretation, cannot provide an explanation for any historical phenomenon. Therefore, the historian’s role is very important in a sense of elucidation of the real meaning of events hidden behind the facts.
Lukin agreed with many researchers who, on the basis of data collected by polling agencies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, concluded that most Russians’ views differed little from those of other Europeans. However, these conclusions are superficial, because their authors failed to interpret the data and thus did not take into account the Soviet legacy in the mentality of Russians. On the contrary, Pipes’ conclusions that Russians “prefer financial security to wealth: 6 percent are prepared to accept the risks attendant on private enterprise, whereas 60 percent would opt for a small but assured income” are based on his understanding of the crucial role of the Soviet legacy in the social reasoning of Russians.
Naming the Pipes’ approach an ideological one, Lukin does not see any difference between totalitarianism and democracy, between Lenin, Stalin and T. Roosevelt, R. Reagan. He also demonstrates his misunderstanding of the key concept of Russian history, that is, its “great-power status.” By his words, “a nation’s striving for great-power status does not necessarily exclude the existence of democracy”. In this case, for him there is no difference between the politics of the United States, the Provisional Government in Russia in 1917 and Stalin’s Power. It is very characteristic for the works of contemporary specialists and it only confirms their vague perception of Russian history and the lack of explanation.
For me, Pipes’ approach to Russian history and current situation is not “a remnant of the Cold War.” On the contrary, this approach allows understanding and explaining the Russian situation much better than the reasoning of many contemporary specialists on Russia. Rejecting the approach based on Western values, and finding themselves before the mountains of facts, they substituted it by either schemes as M. Foucault’s one or follow the so called the objective approach, which in the Russian case always results in viewing the facts from the position of State power.
I am quite sure that Russia’s further movement toward authoritarianism will force the historians and political analysts to return to the rejected approach used by R. Pipes. The most appropriate scientific approach to Russian history is the one based on the foundations of transcendental understanding of freedom and law that defines just the values of Western civilization. And then it will be evident who was right in his analysis of current Russian situation.