#11 - JRL 9008 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:27:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Sergei Roy <sergeiroy@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: 9006 #19

Sergei Roy: On Mr. Rostowski’s The Cossack’s Last Laugh, in JRL 9007 #19

Pan Rostowski’s contribution to the Wall Street Journal Europe must be greeted as a significant contribution to the comic strip school of historiography. In a 450-word sketch he constructs a theory of historical development in Eastern Europe over the last six centuries or so which, in its intended scope, would put Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to shame.

The gist of his theory (there is actually nothing but the gist): In the past, Eastern Europe (the Russian city of Novgorod, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Transylvania and “even” Prussia) had its own, homegrown constitutional forms of government. Then came big bad Russia, “the historical heart of autocracy in Eastern Europe,” which was “later joined by the autocracies of Austria and Prussia,” and “destroyed one East European constitutional regime after another, until the last of them disappeared with the third partition of Poland in 1795.”

My heart bleeds for Poland that was so ruthlessly partitioned, but wasn’t there the little matter of Poland attempting to partition, actually seize, Russia early in the 17th century? What were the Polish king’s men doing in the Kremlin then, bringing constitutionalism to autocratic Russia on the tips of their sabers? It’s a bald historical fact, though, that there was no autocracy in Russia at the time because there was no autocrat, and the Poles were kicked out of Russia in 1612 not by a czar but by a highly democratic militia led by cattle-merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, the rough-looking gentlemen whose statues one can still see in Red Square.

Czar Mikhail Romanov was only elected after the event, much against his will, by a Zemsky Sobor or Land Assembly, which was a much more democratic parliament than the nobles’ diets that Rostowski cites as shining examples of constitutionalism. Pity he does not bother to explain to us the difference between those diets and Russian Dumas which operated between the Land Assemblies but which somehow do not figure as nobles’ diets in Rostowski’s theory. Actually, he does not even mention the word “duma,” as that would spoil the nice picture of constitutional East Europeans vs. autocratic Russia. If he really wanted to learn something of Russian constitutionalism in Prepetrine Russia, he would do well to read some serious studies in the field, say, by Professor Alexander Yanov of New York. But Pan Rostowski is not engaged in scholarly research, his métier is obviously hate-ridden Russophobia.

He resolutely moves from the ridiculous to the lunatic in trying to somehow link up the Cossack community’s tribulations in the 17th century with the recent election saga in Ukraine. The embryonic Orthodox Christian, Russian-speaking Cossack state then had to make a choice between total disappearance and fusion with Catholic Poland, Muslim Turkey, or Orthodox Christian, Russian-speaking Russia. The Cossacks made the obvious choice. What this has to do with constitutionalism or with the recent ruckus in Kiev is more than a sane mind can make out.

The first constitution Ukrainians (or rather Ukraine’s citizens, including millions of Russians, Jews, and other nationalities, besides Pan Rostowski’s “Cossacks”, 100 per cent of them bilingual) ever had was the one that the Communists gave it, along with vast tracts of land that had never belonged to the Ukraine in any shape, manner or form. For the last 13 years or so, Ukraine has had another constitution, still in effect. The recent blocking of the functioning of constitutionally established organs by street crowds can only be linked up with constitutionalism in the framework of attendant propaganda warfare. The whole campaign inevitably brings to mind those 60-odd million of US taxpayers’ dollars that went to organize those spontaneous street rallies, so inexplicably reminiscent of similar ones in Belgrade, Tbilisi, or Batumi. Mr. Rostowski would do well to write some more skits explaining the history of these other reversals to constitutionalism, all apparently intended to spite “autocratic Russia.” Or prepare to write a similarly vivid theory on reviving constitutionalism in, say, Kirghizia. Reversal to constitutionalism in Kirghizia, that would take some beating. But his choice is Moscow.

Indeed, Mr. Rostowski’s lampoon ends on a truly triumphant note: “There is now reason to hope that the Ukrainian example will spread to Russia itself, bringing democracy back to Moscow.” It’s all very well to hope, professor, only don’t tell that to the Cossacks of the Don or the Kuban. They are old-fashioned folk, and get some old-fashioned ideas as to what to do when faced with this sort of language.