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Russian History > Historians > Flashcards

Historians Flashcards

1
Q

Richard Pipes

A
  • anti-communist
  • totalitarian school of thought
  • survivor of the Holocaust
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2
Q

What does Pipes mainly argue about the Russian Revolution?

A

Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power by force

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3
Q

When did Pipes begin research?

A

His research was primarily shaped in the 1950s when the totalitarian school of thought was the dominant explanation for the Russian Revolution

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4
Q

When did the Revisionist school of thought emerge?

A

1980s

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5
Q

Whats the totalitarian position on the RR?

A

The Bolsheviks and the Soviets took over the Russian government bob force

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6
Q

Whats the revisionist position on the Russian Revolution?

A

the revolution was legitimised by the rising number of working-class Russians

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7
Q

What was the historical context of Richard Pipes’ scholarship?

A
  • survivor of Holocaust
  • Cold War
  • Communist government in Poland where he was born
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8
Q

Sheila Fitzpatrick

A
  • belongs to Revisionist school
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9
Q

What was the historical context of Sheila Fitzpatrick’s scholarship?

A
  • the social movements of the 1960s

- the culture of Britain and the USSR

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10
Q

context 1945-1962

A
  • tension between US and USSR
  • war in Korea
  • McCarthyism
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11
Q

context 1962-1972

A
  • Cold War winding down

- social movements

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12
Q

Liberal / Conservative historians

A
  • Pipes
  • Robert Service
  • Martin Malia
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13
Q

What do liberal or conservative historians claim?

A

the Russian Revolution failed because its ideology was deeply flawed

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14
Q

Orlando Figes

A

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.

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15
Q

How does Figes address criticisms of early revisionist accounts?

A

He re-emphasizes the importance of key individuals like Lenin, putting the ‘leaders back into history’

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16
Q

The fall of the former USSR in 1991 has also…

A

drastically changed the historiographical landscape

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17
Q

What is Robert Service’s view?

A

He offers a revised understanding of the totalitarian view

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18
Q

What has the collapse of communism and ‘vindication’ of capitalism led to?

A

a return to more conservative, liberal points of view in popular accounts of the revolution

19
Q

what does the liberal approach seek to do?

A

demonise the Bolsheviks, dismissing ‘mass participatoin’

20
Q

what do revisionists do?

A

they are critical of polarised views (Soviet and Liberal), seeking more complex analysis

21
Q

what is our own bias?

A

Westerners follow the liberal interpretation where Russia seems ‘alien’ and we are repulsed

22
Q

Examples of how easy it is to forget that leaders were NOT just one-sided and dogmatic

A
  1. Lenin’s romantic fling with Inessa Armand

2. Dzerzhinsky not only ran the Cheka, but also a large children’s charity!

23
Q

How did Richard Pipes dismiss the revisionist account?

A

simply a rehash of the Soviet view

24
Q

What does Figes argue about the revisionist view?

A

the broad notions they raise are now impossible to ignore as ‘we are all social historians now’

25
Q

Western Marxist historians

A
  • C. Hill,

- J. Reed

26
Q

The Liberal View (dominant one espoused by Western historians)

A
  • 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
27
Q

Quote from Pipes sin his 2001 ‘communism - A brief history’

A

its ‘an introduction to Communism and, at the same time, its obituary’

28
Q

what does Dmitri Volkogonov argue?

A

brutally condemns October Rev. Draws links between the actions of Lenin and the development of Stalin’s ‘totalitarian’ regime.

29
Q

What is the context of Dmitri Volkogonov’s argument?

A
  • 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
30
Q

Prominent Liberal Historians

A
  1. B. Pares
  2. R. Pipes
  3. J.H Keep
  4. L. Shapiro
  5. M. Lynch
  6. D. Volkogonov
  7. A. Ulam
  8. R. Conquest
31
Q

The Libertarian View

A

they see the role of the masses as the central element of causation; it was ordinary workers and peasants who brought about change.

32
Q

How does Edward Acton summarise the Libertarian view?

A

the ‘goals for which they (the masses) strove were their own’

33
Q

What is the libertarian view sometimes referred to as?

A

‘the theory of unfinished revolution’

34
Q

Prominent Libertarian Historians

A

A. Berkman, M. Brinton

35
Q

What did Revisionist / Social Historians use as well as scholarly research?

A

they borrowed modes of analysis borrowed from sociology, economics and politics

36
Q

What do Revisionists emphasise overall?

A

the importance played by the ordinary people in creating the revolutionary nature of Russian society

37
Q

How do Revisionists try to understand and read history?

A

‘from below’; outlining complexity, regional differences etc.

38
Q

Prominent Revisionist Historians

A
  1. A. Rabinovitch
  2. R. Service
  3. S. Smith
  4. M. Ferro
  5. S. Fitzpatrick
  6. Bernard Williams
  7. C. Read
  8. O. Figes
  9. E. Acton
  10. S. Wheatcroft
39
Q

Soviet view on the October Revolution

A

‘mass movement’ led by Lenin

40
Q

Liberal historians on Revolution

A

just ‘a classic coup d’erat’ - seizure of power by a well organised minority without support of wider society

41
Q

Revisionist historians on Revolution

A

more complex. Popular support of people.

42
Q

Totalitarian view on RR

A

Lenin and Stalin as sole ‘directors’ of terror and control inflincted

43
Q

Lynch quote

A

‘1917 did not mark a complete break with the past. Rather it was the replacement of one form of state authoritarianism with another’

Russian History (11 decks)

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