A Deeper Early Modern: A Response to Paul Bushkovitch

Abstract

In Change and Culture in Early Modern Russia, Paul Bushkovitch calls us to re-envision early modern Russia (roughly 1500 to 1800) beyond bounds of familiar old paradigms, such as seeing Muscovy as stagnant before a revolutionary Petrine era, writing past as if great rulers--demiurges, he calls them (294)--personally authored everything in their times (he cites Peter I and Catherine II; I would add Ivan IV) and comparing Russia to idealized, if not mythical, images of West and Asia (291). Other old paradigms might be added to this list, such as Russia's depiction as a despotism. (1) Bushkovitch argues that an integrated larger should be comparative (to place Russia in a more sophisticated European context or a wider Eurasian context) and--echoing much current opinion--he asserts essential continuity of Russian history through time of Peter I (294-95). (2) Stressing economic vitality, demographic growth, and religious enlightenment, his view is surprisingly upbeat, making Russia look much more normal in European and Eurasian contexts than it does in paradigms driven by top-down Europeanization or modernization. Resetting big picture starts, according to Bushkovitch, with material, economic, and social factors that have not traditionally shaped narrative of 16th through 18th centuries. He begins with Russia's astonishing demographic growth. Acknowledging that from these centuries much of Europe, as well as Ottoman and Chinese empires, experienced quantum population increases, he shows that Russia's development was faster and greater than all of them. Bushkovitch notes that this was due not to territorial gain (most of its conquered lands--the steppe and Siberia--were sparsely populated) but to high fertility rates. No populationist state policy explains this, nor did serfdom slow growth. The economy also grew exponentially from mid-17th century--manufacturing and some heavy industry, domestic and export trade, particularly in grain. Everyone--nobles, peasants, townsmen, and Cossacks--was getting into production and trade. At same time, state was growing institutionally, and new social categories were proliferating. Whirling through this change were powerful new ideas and practices that rapidly transformed elites. Here Bushkovitch prioritizes European culture: from generation raised from 1670s through Peter Is reign, new ideas, practices, and genres emerged that, Bushkovitch declares, constituted innovations equivalent to late medieval and Renaissance European intellectual change. New forms in architecture and art (secular subjects, realistic styles in iconography), baroque poetry and prose, a morality more focused on public life and individual development, science and math, European dress and etiquette, and an energized theology--all were embraced by educated elite. Thereafter, elite immersed itself headlong into Enlightenments (German and French). To extent that Bushkovitch unites material history and culture, he does so by reference to individuals and social groups beyond rulers. His own two books, each titled Peter Great, exemplify this approach by focusing prosopographically on elite networks around Peter. (3) Bushkovitch depicts early modern Russia as an empire teeming with group and individual actors, colliding and rushing forward to make a profit, promote an idea, settle new land, and pursue spiritual goals. It is a messy picture of serendipity and multicausality, driven vaguely by the autonomous motion of society (302), that resulted in productivity, profits, social change, and political power. He asks why all this change occurred so fast and in such a lasting way. Declining to offer a neat new framework, he calls us to new research directions--a greater appreciation of material forces, a return to quite difficult research methods (cliometrics, historical demography, and economic history)--and implicitly to intellectual challenge of integrating cultural with deeper social and material change. …