The All-Encompassing Nature of the “Second World”

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Ab Imperio. No. 3/2011
The review was prepared by Aliaksei Lastouski, a researcher at the Political Sphere Institute.

Those who have carefully read the reviews of previous issues of Ab Imperio will remember that they were devoted to a single annual theme: the Second World, that is, attempts to explain the uniqueness and specificity of the embodiment of a distinct version of modernity in this corner of the world, which for us is recognized through the dominance of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or, once again, Russia.

This issue, however, also has its own subtheme, “The Time of the Second World: Imperial Revolutions and Counterrevolutions,” and the editors set out to examine how, on the one hand, historical continuity is realized and, on the other, what can be seen in radical ruptures and attempts at negation: which essential features of the old order and which constitutive aspects of the new order emerge.

A significant part of the issue is taken up by a translation of several sections from the book by the German historian Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World.

A History of the Nineteenth Century.

It is rather a synthesis of an enormous body of contemporary historiographical works, but synthesis in its best form: when the most important conceptual problems and breakthroughs characteristic of the entire mass of texts are brought to the fore.

The problems of periodization, Eurocentrism, and the redefinition of time and space are examined in a deeply reflective way.

Therefore, expectations of a linear narrative of the events of a single century will be in vain; this text will rather be of interest to professional historians, since it provides a good orientation in the field of nineteenth-century studies, and not only of that century.

The properly “historical” part of the journal begins with an article by Darius Staliūnas, the author of a substantial monograph on Russification in the territory of Lithuania and Belarus in the nineteenth century.

The new study is devoted to the problem of the territorial organization of the Russian Empire: to what extent, and in what way, did the ethno-national principle penetrate it?

Staliūnas focuses on the case of the Augustów/Suwałki Governorate, to which both Polish and Lithuanian national forces laid claim.

The researcher is, however, primarily interested in reconstructing the logic of the imperial authorities; his main source is the documentation of governors-general and high imperial officials, who viewed the situation in their subordinate territories differently and used different strategies to legitimize their demands.

The Lithuanian historian’s article demonstrates that the ethno-national principle, although alien to the dynastic empire, was increasingly forcing its way into rhetoric and the logic of action; therefore, the nationalization of the territorial organization of the former empire in the Soviet Union looks rather like a pragmatic and conditioned step.

The broad spread of ethnic and national principles in the Soviet Union occurred not only in the sphere of administrative division, but also in various local policies, including cultural policy.

But ethnicization was bound to lead to clashes and conflicts, especially in ethnically mixed territories.

Mayhill Fowler examines how Ukrainian-Jewish relations developed in the evolution of theatre.

The author is rather skeptical about the results of these interactions, and although she begins the article with a beautiful myth about a fruitful dialogue of cultures, she ends it with the sad conclusion that Soviet methods of bureaucratic management of culture according to ethnic criteria tended to lead to the disappearance of heterogeneity and reduced opportunities for creative innovation.
A special forum in this issue is devoted to the “anniversary” event: the collapse of the USSR.

First, two “peripheral” views are offered on this event, which significantly changed the course of world history, but looked distinctive from a local perspective.

Thus, Sergei Abashin examines what significance the disappearance of the Soviet state had for the countries of Central Asia and what happened to them over twenty years of independent development.

The author seeks to demonstrate all the complexity and diversity of those categories that are usually perceived as simple and all-explanatory: “power,” “nation-state,” “nation.”

Accordingly, the general category of “post-Soviet” or “post-communist” development, without proper contextualization in this perspective, can explain even less.

The Hungarian sociologist Pál Tamás tries to show how the Soviet Union was perceived in the countries of the “socialist bloc,” and what basic strategies were developed by local elites and intellectuals in order to explain their dependence on the powerful eastern hegemon and to establish practical interaction with it.

Interestingly, he also shows all the structural limitations of the knowledge formed in Central Europe, although it was precisely representatives of this region who, after the collapse of the USSR, became the most sought-after experts on the “post-Soviet” space.

The American researcher David MacDonald also tries to introduce a new perspective into the examination of the collapse of the USSR, but not a peripheral one, as the previous two authors did; rather, one more deeply extended in time.

He examines changes in the perception of the idea of statehood in Russia from the Petrine era onward, where the state was endowed with two contradictory functions: as initiator and main subject of reforms modeled on European modernity, and as guarantor of the stability of society.

In his view, this dichotomous model can be traced throughout the entire existence of statehood, until the careless use of the innovative model during Perestroika led to the collapse of the social order.

In the “archive” section, Oleg Budnitskii discusses how the Russian émigré milieu in 1945 perceived the victory of the Soviet Union in the war, and what ideological and political divisions arose there around the formation of a new attitude toward the victorious country.

A short introduction is accompanied by the publication of correspondence among Russian political émigrés.

An article by the American researcher Alaina Lemon returns us to the Cold War, describing how representatives of hostile blocs, primarily diplomats, perceived and described the emerging distances, and what categories and metaphors they used to construct a discourse of “us” and “them.”

Finally, an article by Kirill Anisimov examines how the prose of the well-known Russian literary classic Ivan Bunin reflected questions of the Russian Empire, the Russian nation, and the newly emerged Soviet state.

The researcher uses the interesting metaphor of the “library” to show Bunin’s bitterness over the destruction and degradation of elite culture, his counterrevolutionary views connected with disappointment in the victory of the popular masses, for whom the “high culture” of the imperial period had become an unnecessary artifact of a past era.

Another special forum is devoted to a discussion of Vera Tolz’s book on the creation and development, from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union, of the school of Oriental studies in St. Petersburg.

It should be noted that, in Tolz’s view, these researchers were perhaps the first to carry out a critical revision of Russian imperialism and, in this sense, can be seen almost as precursors of contemporary postcolonialism.

The reviewers’ responses to this book (M.

Dolbilov, Sergei Glebov, Vladimir Bobrovnikov) are mostly favorable, and the discussion itself reveals important aspects of the functioning and institutionalization of knowledge about “others.”

As always, the journal also contains a solid block of reviews of new literature.

Yet, in the end, if one thinks about it, the strategy chosen by the journal, that of clarifying the distinctiveness of the Second World, can include absolutely all the processes that unfolded in this territory.

And if a concept encompasses everything, then by that very fact it is incapable of explaining anything.

But this skepticism toward the term used should hardly be applied to the content of the journal, which is filled with materials of the highest professional standard, and acquaintance with them will in any case be useful for Belarusian researchers.