Rittersporn, Gabor T Anguish, Anger and Folkways in Soviet Russia (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 182 And what does all this say about the validity of the Yugoslav project itself? Depsite its myriad failings, Aleksandar’s dictatorship did not, apparently, discredit the Yugoslav state idea, nor did it discredit the possibility of the South Slav state idea being ruled through authoritarian means. Both ‘causes’ were taken up again after the end of the Second World War by Tito and the Communists; different dictator, different politics, same lack of civil and liberal society and, ultimately, the same failure. Some have argued that Yugoslavia was a state whose sovereignty could only be secured through authoritarian means. Perhaps, but the lesson here seems to be that authoritarian rule does little to cement this kind of state sovereignty, either. The Yugoslav leviathan, whether royalist or Communist in form, did not bring long-term order and security to its peoples, rather it cleaved them apart, compounded their differences, and allowed no vent through which to release political and social pressures. The explosive violence of the 1940s and the 1990s is closely related to the long-term failures of these authoritarian projects. Nielsen’s fine book has significantly advanced the discussion of the interwar state, of Yugoslavia in the twentieth century, and of authoritarian politics throughout the region. Maynooth University John Paul Newman Rittersporn, Gabor T. Anguish, Anger and Folkways in Soviet Russia. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2014. x + 396 pp. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $27.95 (paperback). In contemplating the history of Stalinism and, in particular, the terror it spawned, one has to wonder ‘what were they thinking?’ What was going on in the heads, not just of Stalin and his henchmen, but of the Soviet population at large? How did people perceive, rationalize and adapt to this chaotic environment and what lasting impacts did this have on Soviet society? These are the questions Gabor Rittersporn considers in this dense, provocative, often fascinating work. It may be a minor quibble, but the book’s title does little to define the contents. Rittersporn’s focus is overwhelmingly on the 1930s, the Terror years especially. This is the watershed of his analysis and theorizing, and things before or after receive only limited attention. At just over 400 pages, the book is not a quick or easy read, though the main text comprises only about 300 pages, the bulk of the remainder being notes. Rittersporn organizes Anguish, Anger and Folkways into three parts focusing, respectively, on one of those terms. Each part, in turn, is divided into three chapters with titles such as ‘The Omnipresent Conspiracy’, ‘From Revolution to Daily Routine’ and ‘Virtuous Girls Building a Sinful World’. REVIEWS 183 Gabor Rittersporn is the emeritus research director of the French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique and a onetime associate of the ‘Marc Bloch’ Research Centre in Berlin. Rittersporn has collaborated closely with scholars such as J. Arch Getty in expanding research and understanding of the Stalinism, something he describes as ‘problematic […] because most scholars carefully avoid offering an exact definition of it’ (p. 9). Rittersporn does not attempt that either, but he argues convincingly that there was more to Stalinism than Stalin, purge trials and terror. His past writings have left Rittersporn branded, justifiably or not, as a ‘revisionist’. Whether the present work is itself revisionist or a kind of critique of Soviet revisionism is ultimately unclear. Nevertheless, the author uses his long and careful mining of Soviet archives (thoroughly detailed in his notes) to present a diverse body of case studies, statistics and anecdotes to illustrate his broader, theoretical points. Even where the latter may not add up to that much, the details and insights his examples provide are illuminating. For instance, Rittersporn challenges the common perception of the Stalinist ‘Party State’ as an irresistible juggernaut that methodically and mercilessly crushed all opposition. The mass repression of the 1930s, he suggests, was driven not by the regime’s sense of power but by a ‘clumsy anxiety’ born of weakness and insecurity (p. 62). Strange as it may seem, in addition to worrying about spies, saboteurs, Trotskyites and counterrevolutionaries , Stalin’s security men also had to deal...