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Ok, clearly I hate myself because I am actually now going to do a line-by-line refutation of this nonsense. https://twitter.com/daniel_dsj2110/status/1334295004790091781
First, a quick transcription of what the photo in the OP says: "Since the time of the tzars, historians had noted Russia’s tendency to adopt with much fanfare the latest European ideas - whether representative government or modern bureaucracy, free markets or state socialism -...
only to subordinate or abandon such imported notions in favour of older, harsher ways of maintaining the social order. In the battle for Russia’s identity, fear and fatalism usually beat out hope and change. It was an understandable response to a thousand-year history ...
of Mongol invasions, byzantine intrigues, great famines, pervasive serfdom, unbridled tyranny, countless insurrections, bloody revolutions, crippling wars, years-long sieges, and millions upon millions slaughtered, all on a frigid landscape that forgave nothing.”
So, let's begin:
"since the time of the tsars" - the first Russian ruler to use that title was Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century.
"since the time of the tsars" - the first Russian ruler to use that title was Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century.
He did take some European innovations, like muskets, but European firearms were based on East Asian inventions, so I find this a questionable example of importing European things
"representative government" - if here we mean Ancient Greek-style democracy, everywhere that was not ancient Greece imported it
For that matter, Medieval Novgorod had something that is often claimed as a form of representative government, the Veche, which was not based on European forms of rule but likely emerged from earlier East Slavic traditions
"moder bureaucracy" - guys, I have SO MANY feelings about early modern Russian bureaucracy. The short version is - at the very least before 1700 it was not European, but very much Russian in form
Here is a whole chapter I wrote on early modern Russian bureaucracy
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/OBP.0122/OBP.0122.08.pdf
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/OBP.0122/OBP.0122.08.pdf
"free markets" - I have never really been clear what a free market really is, but I'm not sure that anyone would claim that it existed either under the Tsars or during the Soviet Union, so I am not sure what we are doing here
"state socialism" - Marx was German, so key parts of the ideology were imported from Western Europe. I'm not a Soviet historian but I understand that people have argued that the tradition Russian peasant "mir" or communal leadership of a village influenced Russian socialism
"only to subordinate or abandon such imported notions in favour of older, harsher ways of maintaining the social order" - what exactly is an "older form" if we are beginning with Ivan the Terrible? Was Stalin channeling Kievan Rus?
This is not even getting in to premodern Western European ways of "maintaining the social order," which were, to put it mildly, extremely harsh
"In the battle for Russia’s identity, fear and fatalism usually beat out hope and change." well, someone has been reading Dostoyevsky
Also, if we are talking about the Russian Empire, it was a massive, multi-ethnic, multi-faith polity.
Could we maybe write histories of the Russian Empire taking into account the varied and complex identities of the colonised peoples of the Empire, not just the navel-gazing of white Russian writers?
"It was an understandable response to a thousand-year history of Mongol invasions" - when exactly are we beginning this history? Ivan the Terrible was born in 1530, the Mongols were attacking the East Slavic lands in the 1230s. This is a super odd chronology
"byzantine intrigues, great famines" - which country would this not apply to? Premodern courts were all byzantine intrigue, all the time.
"pervasive serfdom," - as opposed to Western Europe, which would never keep people in a form of forced labor
"unbridled tyranny," - look, there are some incredibly brutal moments in Russian history, and some rulers who were incredibly violent. But take 1,000 years of the history of any region, you will find tyrants. It is not a phenomenon unique to Russia
"countless insurrections, bloody revolutions, crippling wars, years-long sieges," - again, this applies to basically everywhere. America has had an insurrection or two, and a revolution
"and millions upon millions slaughtered" - if this is a reference to WWII, surely we should be blaming at least part of that on the Nazis?
"all on a frigid landscape that forgave nothing.” - leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not the natural environment will forgive us, again Russia is a literal empire. Not everyone lives in the frozen North.
It's like he thinks Russia is a depressing version of Santa's workshop
Also, cold places are awesome. See attached [ID: a snowy landscape facing in to the sun with a bisected glass pyramid building]
![Also, cold places are awesome. See attached [ID: a snowy landscape facing in to the sun with a bisected glass pyramid building]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoSAqsCXYAEaNEb.jpg "Also, cold places are awesome. See attached [ID: a snowy landscape facing in to the sun with a bisected glass pyramid building]")
In conclusion, this is nonsense, and I am tired of people talking about Russia without doing the reading
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