British Studies in Russia Today
From: Newton Key <cfnek@eiu.edu>
List Editor: Richard Gorrie <rgorrie@UOGUELPH.CA>
Editor's Subject: REV: Toporova on British Studies in Russia Today
Author's Subject: REV: Toporova on British Studies in Russia Today
Date Written: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:05:19 -0600
Date Posted: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 15:43:38 -0500
REVIEW ESSAY
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (January 2004)
British Studies in Russia Today
Reviewed for H-Albion by Svetlana Toporova <toropovas@mail.ru>, Yaroslavl University
[Editor's note: What follows is the first of several commissioned reviews of recent publications in British Studies around the world. While the editor decided that readers of H-Albion would prefer the titles of the works transliterated, the author is willing to be contacted if someone needs the title of a work or works mentioned in the original Russian.]
In the twentieth century historiography of British studies in Russia we can identify two periods: the Soviet period (1920-1980s) and the so-called Post-perestroika years (1990 until the present). It is important to remember that during the former period, there were political and ideological reasons that made British history unattractive to Soviet scholars. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated after Churchill's famous speech in 1945 and during the Cold War, when it was not possible for Russian scholars to work in British archives or to read leading European research in the field of British history. There was also propaganda in the USSR that inhibited objective research or the showing of "real" British history (with its pluses and not only minuses). Consequently, Russian scholars gave less attention to British history than they gave to the history of other European countries.
The main consideration was given to the seventeenth-century revolution and Oliver Cromwell; colonialism and British foreign policy (mostly because primary sources were available); World War II, when Soviet Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States opened the Second Front; and the history of the Communist International and the labor movement in Britain. But you would be stymied if you wanted to find any books on, say, the history of the British monarchy, political parties, church and religion, as such subjects were anathema to a state ruled by workers and peasants who had destroyed those institutions in their own country and were now struggling against the "world bourgeoisie."
In spite of the difficulties, this period did give us a brilliant generation of historians who wrote about Britain, including Nikolai Erofeev, Vladimir Trukhanovsky, Lev Kertman, and Michail Barg. A positive tendency of those days was the publication of the annual _Problems of British History_, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing until the last volume appeared at the beginning of the 1990s. Its absence is keenly felt because _Problems_ gave a full review of new publications on British history in Russia.
Not only has the study of British history suffered comparative neglect during the recent era in Russia, it has also reflected the whole situation in historical research in our country during this period. While modern European historiography has been focusing on new questions of social history such as the history of gender, Russian scholars continue to be interested mainly in such "out of date" problems as the history of diplomacy, politics, etc. (A nice exception is Tatiana Labutina's book on the education of English women in the seventeenth century, 2001.) Proof of this are the monographs that have appeared in the last five years, such as Olga Dmitrieva on Elizabeth I (1998), Sergei Peregudov on Anthony Blair (1999), Alexander Prokopov on British radicals of the right (2000), Elena Poliakova on Irish politics in the twentieth century (2002), Svetlana Toropova on Victorian politics (2002), Tamara Gella and Marina Aizenshtat on Victorian British foreign policy (2002), and Galina Ostapenko on British politics in the second part of the twentieth century (2002).
But it is also noteworthy that in the last decade, when Russian historiography has severed its final connections with Marxism, such previously popular problems as the history of British socialism, the working class movement, and the Labour party, have received little attention. The same can be said about British foreign and colonial policy. The development of British imperialism during the late Victorian era and the downfall of the British Empire, which had been brilliantly studied by well-known Soviet scholars like Vladlen and Kirill Vinogradov, Nikolai Erofeev, and Vladimir Trukhanovsky, are no longer popular among Russian historians.
What periods of British history have become fashionable? A sign of the times is the growing interest in the British monarchy, due as much to current scandals and the universal popularity of Princess Diana as to previous neglect. Olga Dmitrieva, a scholar from Moscow University, has written a biography of Elizabeth I (1998). Galina Ostapenko, Moscow Institute of World History, is an "admirer" of Queen Victoria. Vladimir Matveev has published several essays on the Georgian dynasty. Vladimir Popov, a Russian diplomat, is the author of a book, _Life in Buckingham Palace_, on Elizabeth II and her family (1993).
Victorian Britain, which already has many volumes devoted to it from Eastern Europe, is still very attractive to Russian historians. After all, during this golden age, not only did Britain have the world's strongest economy, but also its largest empire. Furthermore, due to Parliamentary reforms at the end of the era, Britain became the most democratic country in the world. Historians today are not only interested in Victorian party politics (Marina Aizenshtat, from Moscow, on Parliament and British society in the early to mid-Victorian period; Tamara Gella, from Orel, on liberal-imperialism; and Svetlana Toropova, from Yaroslavl, on Liberal Party Politics in late-Victorian Britain) and politicians (for example, Lev Kertman on Chamberlain's political dynasty; Vladimir Trukhanovsky on Disraeli [1993], which is the best among many biographies of this man; and Oleg Naumenkov on Robert Salisbury's political life), but also in religion and the church (witness Irina Novichenko's book on Charles Kingsley [2001] and Elena Poliakova's articles on the Irish Catholic Church and the Ulster Protestants). Meanwhile, previously influential schools of history that studied the British Chartist, labor, and communist movements have practically vanished.
One more favorite theme is the history of European and British Enlightenment, since this was the transitional period from the old political and religious regime to the modern bourgeois states. The role and influence of the latter on the development of modern European political culture and the democratization process have been rethought in the last few years. For example, Mikhail Barg's introductory article to a translation of Lord Bolingbroke's famous _Letters on the Study and Use of History_ (1976) makes the important suggestion that Bolingbroke, while in France, popularized the ideas which later we find in Voltaire. Barg's hunch was confirmed soon thereafter by two books: _The Enlightenment Movement in Britain_, edited by Nadezda Mesheriakova and Tatiana Labutina's _The Creation of Modern Democracy_.[1] Detailed analyses of John Locke, James Tolland, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Richard Steele, and others, give us good reason to believe that all of these people made significant contributions to the intellectual climate in modern Europe.
In the meantime, however, eighteenth-century British political history has fallen into neglect. It is difficult to find any serious research other than the two scholarly books of Andrei Sokolov from Yaroslavl Pedagogical University. The first volume (1986) concerns Russia and Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, paying particular attention to cultural developments in the two countries. The second, _Political Development in Britain in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century_ (1997), deals with colonial and foreign policy.
British political history has not inspired many researchers in the last few years. There are probably several causes for this, such as the demise of English history centers in the provincial universities and to some degree in Moscow, and the continuing difficulty of obtaining grants to work in British archives. The governmental British Council, with an office in Moscow, gives little help, even to support publications on British history produced by Russian scholars, let alone to sponsor scholars to do research in England. Perhaps the reason is that there are many British historians who are interested in this subject with ample opportunities to prepare monographs, including access to archives. Moreover, Russian scholars have a different mentality that makes it difficult for them to understand the particularities of British political life. (It is no different for a foreign scholar trying to pursue high-level research in Russia, now that archives have been opened up; here it is the Russian historians who would have both the mental and the material advantage.)
Two works on recent British politics can be cited, however. The first, a brief essay written by Galina Ostapenko (2002) on the development of British politics in the second half of the twentieth century, evolved from a lecture course she gave at Moscow University of the Humanities and the State University of Saratov. Ostapenko looks at the specifics of British political life, such as Parliamentary structure and functions, party structure, the Church of England and the monarchy, and the British model of colonization. She also shows how the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher and John Major developed a radical reform policy leading to a full-blown market economy, and how Labour in turn evolved from welfare statism to Anthony Blair's own brand of radical reformism. The other publication is an article by Victor Frolov, in which he argues, not entirely persuasively, that the revival of the Liberal-Democratic Party and Charles Kennedy's leadership have created a genuine three-party system in England--though not necessarily in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland--and even pose a threat to Labour's hold on power.[2]
After the collapse of the USSR it was not easy for leading Russian political figures to determine the correct path of future development for their country. Taking into consideration that European democratic states have highly developed liberal values and also remembering that Russia, before the Great October Revolution, had made significant strides on the liberal path, Russian political thinkers began to study European and pre-revolutionary Russian liberal experience. Based on the realization that in the early 1990s the Liberal-Democratic Party, led by Vladimir Zirinovsky, made an attempt to come to power on a platform of quasi-liberal values, we can easily understand why the classic British liberal experience suddenly became very attractive for both politicians and historians. Thus, we have _Liberalism in the West in the Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries_ (1995), which contains a special chapter written by Vladimir Sogrin on the evolution of British liberalism. One of the most influential researchers of Anglo-American liberal values, Sogrin mentions two main periods in British liberal history: classical liberalism, culminating in a doctrine of pure individualism and minimal state popular in British society for seven decades from the beginning of the nineteenth century; and a new, social variant, which started to develop in the last third of the Victorian century. The latter paid attention to the more active role of the state in society and positive freedoms of the individuals which, in turn, have led people to consider the interests of other members of society.
I should also mention that those areas of traditional scholarship that have not been simply abandoned are being developed in new ways. Historians are trying to study traditional problems by discarding old ideological biases, making use of foreign historiographical data, and seeking admission to foreign archives. Examples of such research are: Vladimir Grudzinsky, _Great Britain and Empire Federalism_ (1996); Evgeny Sergeev, _The Policy of Great Britain and Germany in the Far East_ (1998); and, Galina Ostapenko _British Conservatives and Decolonization_ (1995).
Another trend is that both comparative and interdisciplinary research have become popular among Russian historians during recent years. That is why, in the middle of the 1990s, the Association of European Comparative History was founded in Moscow. Several roundtables and conferences have been organized under its auspices. Since 1994, it has also published the annual _Russia and the West_, which contains a large number of articles connecting events in Russia to those in the rest of the world. A good example of interdisciplinary research is Evgeny Sergeev's monograph, _The Russian Military Elite and the West: 1900-1914_ (2001). A book of comparative essays, _The European Federalization Experience_ (2002), contains articles on federalist ideas in European social and political thought. Tamara Gella writes therein about the British liberal idea of imperial federation in the last third of the nineteenth century. Elena Poliakova recounts the origin and evolution of federalization of Britain itself, concluding that the British federal experiment in the early-twentieth century concerning Ireland was in fact an application of Edmund Burke's thought on how to regulate relations of Britain with her North American colonies. Burke's idea was one of devolution, distributing political power away from Westminster, toward local authorities. (Of course, even though Ulster was the first example of the practical realization of these federalist ideas, Northern Ireland remains to this day the main obstacle to the federation of Britain.)
Since the beginning of the 1990s the development of British history in Russia has been closely connected with the activity of the Association of British History, the so-called English Club, which was founded in 1992 in Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Trukhanovsky, a highly respected specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British political history and diplomacy, and the author of biographies of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Benjamin Disraeli. Unfortunately, with Trukhanovsky's death in 2000, the Association practically ceased to function. In March 2003, however, the Institute of World History in Moscow published the third volume of the Russia and Britain series as a tribute to Trukhanovsky. This symbolic step initiated the revival of the British Historians' Association, with Apollon Davidson, a specialist in British policy in South Africa and the author of a political biography of Cecil Rhodes, as its new leader. Historians from Moscow State University have become the new Executive Committee, and the presence of people like Olga Dmitrieva, Sergei Soloviov, and Mikhail Lipkin will, it is hoped, bring fresh ideas.
The new volume of the Russia and Britain series, titled _In the World of British History_, consists of three main parts. First is an introduction, which is comprised of Trukhanovsky's last interview. Following that is a collection of essays and memoirs about him, including one about his research style by his wife, Natalia Dumova. The main part of the book consists of fifteen articles, written especially for this volume, which indicate the major current trends of research on British history. Among them are several biographical essays: Tatiana Labutina on Jonathan Swift and Marina Aizenshtat on Jeremy Bentham, Tatiana Gella on Lord Rosebery, Larissa Tupoleva on Charles Parnell, Sergei Soloviov and Elena Susloparova on Richard Tawney, and Elena Dobrova on Lewis Namier, thereby covering the role and influence of figures from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
Three other essays in _In the World of British History_ open up for us unknown pages from the interwar period of British history. Vladimir Gorodnov, researching newly accessible Russian archives, tells about the activity of four Britons--James Shields, Douglas Walton, George Hardy, and Peter Carrigan--who were Communist International agents in the South African Communist Party. Lidia Pozdeeva, analyzing the diary for the period 1938-41 of a well-known Russian diplomat, Ivan Maisky, who was for many years (1932-43) ambassador to Britain, provides us with interesting details on Soviet-British relations on the eve on World War II. Oleg Rzeshevsky's article on Winston Churchill's visit to Moscow and meeting with Stalin in 1942 reflects on the uneasy relationship between the two leaders; nevertheless this visit helped to create the anti-Hitler coalition that won WWII. Rzeshevsky acknowledges a seminar on "Churchill and Stalin," which was organized by the British Foreign Office in March 2002.
Finally, we can mention a couple of essays in the Trukhanovsky volume on the post-war British historical period. One is Natalia Kapitonova's article on problems and perspectives of the British Labour Party and England's relationship with the European Union, and the other is Sergei Peregudov's paper on British politics after the 2001 general elections. Peregudov, who is also the author of a biography on Anthony Blair, stresses that "New Labour" politics have changed since 1997, the party having moved to the right wing of British political life. He also points out that Labour's split with socialism and its working-class origins has become obvious in its party documents and declarations as well as in its politics.
Meanwhile, the significant step will soon be taken to try to unite all Russian specialists in British history: in December 2003 an international conference will be held in the Moscow Kremlin on the theme, "Russia and Britain: The History of Their Connections since the Middle of the Sixteenth Century." This conference will mark the 450th anniversary of trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries. There will be panels on the development of economic, political, and cultural ties, on Britons in Russia and Russians in Britain, and other topics. Newly uncovered facts, documents, archives, and museum collections will be showcased. Cultural dialogues in political thought, literature, art, and science will be organized in scholarly forum. Historians from around the world will attend, such as Paul Bushkovich of Yale University, who is a specialist on Peter I. [Editor's note: we will post a report on this conference shortly.]
There have been several positive tendencies in British studies in Russia over the past decade. Although the number of studies in Russia on British history published annually is roughly the same as during the Soviet era, it is noticeable that during the most recent years, modern British history has become more attractive for students and younger scholars. Because the latter do not carry the old "ideological luggage" and do have the opportunity to conduct their research not only in Russian but also in Western archives, it is easier for them to produce high-quality papers. It is also obvious that the problems that have received the most attention have changed completely and now come closer to those which appeal to Western historians.
Notes
[1]. Nadezda Mesheriakova, ed., _The Enlightenment Movement in Britain_ (Moscow State University, 1991); and Tatiana Labutina, _The Creation of Modern Democracy_ (Moscow Institute of World History, 1997).
[2]. Frolov's article is in _New and Contemporary History_ 4 (2003).
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From: mic <mic@MM1734.spb.edu> List Editor: Richard Gorrie <rgorrie@UOGUELPH.CA> Editor's Subject: Re: REV: Toporova on British Studies in Russia Today Author's Subject: Re: REV: Toporova on British Studies in Russia Today Date Written: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 22:52:27 +0300 Date Posted: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:22:00 -0500
Dear H-Albioners,
As one of the Russians who is studying Britain and British-Russian relations (mostly in the 18th c.), I was happy to see in H-Albion Dr. Toropova's review of 'British Studies in Russia Today'. I am not going to criticize the review, for I do really respect all people and works mentioned in it. However, I believe that the picture is not complete without some important details which I'd like to add.
My first point is that British studies in Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia have always tended to be interdisciplinary. Second, Britain has always been interesting for Russians in the aspect - and this is quite natural - of its relations to their own country. Very many important things about Britain and its history have been said and written by Russians from these two vantage points. And these two fields have been, I believe, the fields of intensive interactions between Russian and British scholars.
To make my story short, I just mention some names and publications.
It is impossible not to mention academician M.P. Alekseev's 'Russian-English Literature Links' (Moscow, 1982), a real encyclopaedia on the topic. Yu.D. Levin's papers and translations are also unavoidable, and not only for historians of British and Russian literature.
A comparatively new phenomenon in modern Russia is the development of history of ideas in St. Petersburg. A group of scholars organizes international conferences, compiles and publishes the interdisciplinary almanac 'The Philosophical Age', in which one can find papers of scholars from Russia (including some persons mentioned in the review), Britain and many other countries. Here are some titles: - The Philosophical Age. Almanac 9. The Science of Morality: J. Bentham and Russia. St. Petersburg, 1999; - The Philosophical Age. Almanac 15. Scotland and Russia in the Enlightenment. St. Petersburg, 2001; - The Philosophical Age. Almanac 19. Russia and Britain in the Enlightenment: An Attempt in Philosophical and Cultural Comparativistics. Part 1. St. Petersburg, 2002; - The Philosophical Age. Almanac 20. Russia and Britain in the Enlightenment: An Attempt in Philosophical and Cultural Comparativistics. Part 2. St. Petersburg, 2002. All these almanacs can be found at the National Library of Scotland. I'll be glad to help those who are interested.
***
Dr. Mikhail Mikeshin
Executive Director, St. Petersburg Center for the History of Ideas
Member of the Civic Education Project (Russia) Advisory Board
http://ideashistory.org.ru