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The Stalinist Mentality and the Higher Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David Joravsky
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Extract

“Mentality” has become a fashionable term among historians, as a supposedly neutral way of pointing to a pattern of beliefs that are typical of a particular group. “Mentality” seems to avoid the metaphysical mystery of phrases like “the spirit of Russia,” or the Marxist anger in the term “ideology,” which carries a charge of grandiose delusion, of self-interest disguised as universal truth. In deference to fashion and to the goal of irenic discourse, let us use the word “mentality,” though we know that new words do not remove old difficulties.

A central difficulty is the facile assumption that ideology and practicality are elemental contraries, that the conflict between them shapes the evolving mentality of communist regimes. This essay on Soviet history rests on a different assumption: that practicality is itself an ideological concept which can be understood only by reference to particular historical contexts. It is an illusion to imagine that practicality can be defined by reference to technics, a supposedly autonomous force that pulls all societies into a single anthill system. That technological fantasy has subverted the grand ideological theories of previous centuries and increasingly undermines even academic theorizing about human beings. Ideologists become servile functionaries — “public relations experts,” as we say in the West — while academics are reduced to other forms of technical expertise and to purely decorative functions. Soviet history presents an extreme version of that characteristic triumph of “pragmatism” in the twentieth century. To a large extent, I shall try to show, such “pragmatism” is mythic self-delusion, a way of avoiding dangerous threeway conflicts of forthright political rule, openly avowed ideological prophecy, and relentlessly quizzical higher learning.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , Winter 1983 , pp. 575 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1983

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References

1. See Alexander Vucinich, “Soviet Physicists and Philosophers in the 1930s: Dynamics of a Conflict,” Isis, June 1980; and chap. 18 of D. Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-1932 (New York, 1961).

2. Pod znamenem marksizma, 1937, no. 7, p. 43.

3. See the newspaper of Moscow State University, Za proletarskie kadry, January 9 and April 11, 1937.

4. See Wetter, G. A., Dialectical Materialism: A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1958), pp. 405–32 Google Scholar; and Loren, Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, chaps. 3 and 4. The sharp difference between these two interpretations derives, in part, from their concentration on sharply different periods, Wetter on the Stalin era, Graham on the years since Stalin. For Stalin's call for freedom of thought in 1950, see below, pp. 587-88.

5. Stalin, “Marksizm i voprosy iazykoznaniia,” Pravda, June 20, 1950. Conveniently republished in the American continuation of his interrupted Sochineniia, vol. 3 [16] (Stanford, California, 1967), pp. 114-48.

6. I am here respectfully disagreeing with Loren Graham's effort to prove that there is a meaningful and distinctive Soviet Marxist view in the philosophical interpretation of physics. I am agreeing with Paul Feyerabend's response to Graham's argument. See Slavic Review, 25, no. 3 (September 1966): 381-420.

7. See Loren Graham, “A Soviet Marxist View of Structural Chemistry,” /sis, 55 (March 1964): 20-31.

8. S. I. Ozhegov, Slovar’ russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1964), p. 681. The word that I have translated as “pattern” is shablon (from the German Schablone), which is also pejorative in this context.

9. N. N. Semenov (1896- ) is the man. For a list of biographical works about him, see Istoriia estestvoznaniia; literatura opublikovannaia v SSSR, 1 (1949): 215; 4/2 (1974): 62; 5 (1977): 260-62. For Semenov warning against the stifling of initiative by bossism in science, see Priroda, 1969, no. 3, p. 52.

10. See Zhores A. Medvedev, Soviet Science (New York, 1978), pp. 8, 30, 57, 67, and 79, for a sensitive appraisal of official statistics, which claim an increase from 11,000 scientists in 1914 to 1,254,000 in 1976. For some of the many appraisals of the embarrassing contrast between quantity and quality, see Medvedev, passim; and Thane Gustafson, “Why Doesn't Soviet Science Do Better Than It Does?” in Linda, Lubrano and Susan, Solomon, eds., The Social Context of Soviet Science (Boulder, Colorado and Folkestone, England, 1980)Google Scholar; and various authors in Thomas, John R. and Kruse-Vaucienne, U. M., eds., Soviet Science and Technology (Washington, D.C., 1977)Google Scholar; and OECD, , Science Policy in the USSR (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar. See especially the publications of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, which has been prolific in meticulous studies of the technological aspects.

11. See references in preceding footnote. See also K. E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1978).

12. See, for instance, Razvitie khimii v SSSR (Moscow, 1967), 3 vols. For a nearly complete listing see Istoriia estestvoznaniia, the very large bibliography of the history of science cited above in n. 9. It is nearly complete, not only in the usual way — there are unintentional omissions — but also in the special Soviet manner; certain historians of science and certain interpretations have been deliberately sentenced to oblivion. Boris Hessen, for example, and other victims of the terror have been systematically excluded. Disapproved interpretations have been excluded in haphazard fashion.

13. The quotations are from the Soviet dictionary cited in n. 8, and from the larger dictionary: D. N. Ushakov, ed., Tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka (Moscow, 1935-40), 4 vols.

14. Ibid.

15. For the major essay, see N. A. Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1962), 5: 7-140. Compare pp. 560-62 for the Soviet editor's report of the controversy over Dobroliubov's Aesopian meaning. Note especially the Soviet effort to endorse the most radical interpretation, which would place the “popular masses” in the “realm of darkness,” while insisting that they are not of it, that they have the revolutionary potential to transcend their cultural backwardness. For an English version of the major essay, see Dobroliubov, Selected Philosophical Essays (Moscow, 1956), pp. 218-373.

16. Dudintsev, V. D., Ate khlebom edinym (Moscow, 1957)Google Scholar, caused a sensation when it was published. The author was even publicly rebuked by Khrushchev. Nevertheless, the book was officially approved for publication and has since been republished (Moscow, 1968). D. A. Granin has been much less controversial in his novelistic pictures of scientists and engineers, yet he too has been preoccupied with the problem of systematic stultification. See especially his Idu na grozu (Moscow, 1963), and Keith, Armes, “Daniil Granin and the World of Soviet Science” Survey, 20, no. 1 (90).Google Scholar

17. See Joravsky, , The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 174–76, 290–91Google Scholar, et passim. Compare Nancy, Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 151 Google Scholar, for Khrushchev telling the Central Committee that it must increase its control of scientific work in order to reduce hackwork.

18. See Grigori, Freiman, It Seems I Am a Jew: A Samizdat Essay on Soviet Mathematics (London and Amsterdam, 1980)Google Scholar. Translated and edited by Melvyn Nathanson, whom I thank for giving me a copy. The reader who wonders whether Freiman's experience is typical should note the evidence presented on pp. 85-94.

19. Compare Hamberg, , “Invention in the Industrial Research Laboratory” Journal of Political Economy, 71 (April 1963): 95–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Volkov, G. N., Sotsiologiia nauki (Moscow, 1968), pp. 206–207 Google Scholar, for a quotation from Norbert Wiener's autobiography pitying the new generations of scientists who work in “science factories” and lack the individual freedom he enjoyed. Such Western warnings about the bureaucratization of science are commonly used by Soviet sociologists of science to make Soviet difficulties seem part of a worldwide trend, or even to justify the trend as a move to collective creativity. See, for instance, Dobrov, G. M., Nauka o nauke (Kiev, 1970), pp. 186ffGoogle Scholar; and Lange, K. A., Organizatsiia upravleniia nauchnymi issledovaniiami (Leningrad, 1971), p. 188–241.Google Scholar

20. See, for example, Stalin's overruling of specialists’ advice on the development of synthetic rubber. Medvedev, R. A., Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, 1971), p. 1971 Google Scholar; Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, pp. 375-79; and R. A., Lewis, “Innovation in the USSR: The Case of Synthetic Rubber” Slavic Review, 38, no. 1 (March 1979): 48–59.Google Scholar

21. For Soviet controversies in economics and history during the 1920s, see Alexander, Erlich, The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-28 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; Nicholas, Spulber, ed., Strategy for Economic Growth (Bloomington, Ind., 1964)Google Scholar and Nicholas, Spulber, Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth (Bloomington, Ind., 1964)Google Scholar; Black, Cyril E., ed., Rewriting Russian History (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Konstantin, Shteppa, Russian Historians and the Soviet State (New Brunswick, N.J., 1962)Google Scholar; and George, Enteen, The Soviet Scholar-Bureaucrat: M. N. Pokrovskii and the Society of Marxist Historians (University Park, Penn., 1978).Google Scholar

22. See Joravsky, , Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-1934 (New York, 1961)Google Scholar, chap. 4. Pravda, August 31, 1922, carried news of the arrest and banishment, without specification of number. Various numbers have since been reported. I take the figure of 161 from B. A., Chagin and V. I., Klushin, Bor'ba za istoricheskii materializm v SSSR v 20-e gody (Leningrad, 1975), p. 73–74.Google Scholar

23. G. I. Chelpanov, Russia's leading experimental psychologist, put the phrase in print. Quoted by N. I. Bukharin, Ataka (Moscow, 1924), p. 133.

24. See Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair.

25. The best history is Girke, W. and Janow, H., Sowjetische Soziolinguistik; Probleme und Genese (Kronberg, Germany, 1974)Google Scholar. Compare their anthology, Sprache und Gesellschaft in der Sowjetunion (Munich, 1975); and Lawrence, Thomas, The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr (Berkeley, 1957)Google Scholar. For a superficial effort to rescue Marr's theories, see “Langage et classes sociales: le marrisme,” Langages, 46 (1977). The French authors are unwilling to confront the bleak truth of Girke and Janow's judgment: “The usual designation of 0[the Marr school's] method as ‘vulgar sociology’ is not justified, for it actually had no sociological method, but merely correlated language conditions with socioeconomic conditions in mechanical fashion, which hardly signifies any sociological method” (p. 50).

26. See Obshchee iazykoznanie. Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ literatury izdannoi v SSSR s 1918 po 1962 (Moscow, 1962). See especially p. 3, for the editor's protest against “the opinion, unfortunately widespread among some of our linguists,” that problems of general linguistics have been neglected in the Soviet Union. Compare the scant attention given to Soviet thinkers in “Iazyk“ (“Language“), Filosofskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1970) 5: 604-11. For the disappointing results of the revival of sociolinguistics, see Girke and Janow, Sowjetische Soziolinguistik. Compare the unconvincing declaration of great respect for Soviet sociolinguistics in Jan, Prucha, Soviet Psycholinguistics (The Hague, 1972), pp. 42–43 Google Scholar. Compare also the review by David L. Olmstead in Historiographia Linguistica, 1982, no. 1/2, pp. 145-52.

27. I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, 3 [16]: 114-71.

28. Ibid., p. 144.

29. See especially the proceedings of the two major “Pavlov sessions“: Akademiia nauk SSSR, Nauchnaia sessiia, posviashchennaia problemam fiziologicheskogo ucheniia Akademika I. P. Pavlova, 28 iiunia—4 iiulia 1950 g. (Moscow, 1950); and Akademiia meditsinskikh nauk, Fiziologicheskoe uchenie Akademika I. P. Pavlova v psikhiatrii i nevropatologii; materialy … zasedaniia … 11-15 oktiabria 1951 g. (Moscow, 1951)Google Scholar. Compare Joravsky, D, “The Mechanical Spirit: The Stalinist Marriage of Pavlov to Marx” Theory and Society, 4 (1977): 457–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. See Joravsky, “A Great Soviet Psychologist,” New York Review of Books, May 16, 1974.

31. A virtual confession of the scandalous situation can be found in the article “Signal Systems“ in Filosofskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1970), 5: 5.

32. See Bukharin, “O mirovoi revoliutsii, nashei strane, kul'ture i prochem. Otvet Akademiku Pavlovu,” Krasnaia nov', 1924, nos. 1 and 2, and widely reprinted, as a pamphlet and in Bukharin, Atoka (Moscow, 1924), pp. 171-215.

33. See Vygotskii, “Psikhologicheskaia nauka,” in Obshchestvennye nauki SSSR, 1917-1927 (Moscow, 1928), pp. 32 et passim.

34. See especially P. K., Anokhin, “Analiz i sintez v tvorchestve Akademika I. P. Pavlova,” Pod znamenem marksizma, 1936, no. 9 Google Scholar, with its forthright acknowledgment that “the most vulnerable point in the doctrine of conditioned reflexes is its separation from world thought in neurology“ (p. 78). The most extensive Pavlovian effort to reconcile the master's doctrine with modern neurophysiology was made by the Polish disciple Konorski, Jerzy in Conditioned Reflexes and Neuron Organization (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar.

35. Gregory Razran, Mind in Evolution (Boston, 1971).

36. For Pavlov's anti-Marxist lectures and writings, see the rebuttal by Bukharin, cited in n. 32. For the Bolsheviks pleading with him to stay in Russia, see Lenin, Sochineniia, 4th ed., 32:48; 44:325-26; 45:23.

37. See accounts in Smirnov, A. A., Razvitie isovremennoesostoianiepsikhologicheskoi nauki v SSSR (Moscow, 1975), pp. 137ffGoogle Scholar; and Petrovskii, A. V., Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii (Moscow, 1967), pp. 61ffGoogle Scholar. The two Marxist emissaries were K. N. Kornilov (1879-1957), whose role is stressed in both histories, and A. B. Zalkind (1888-1936?), who is willfully ignored because he was condemned by the terror in the 1930s. See his report, in Pravda, January 10, 1924. Compare contemporary accounts in Krasnaia nov', 1924, no. 2(19), and Vygotskii, “Psikhologicheskaia nauka,” as cited in n. 33. G. I. Chelpanov (1862-1936) was the major victim of exemplary dismissal, from the directorship of the Psychological Institute that he had founded. His place was given to his former student and newly fledged Marxist, Kornilov.

38. Space does not permit proof of these judgments. For the derivation from Gestalt, see Eckhardt Scheerer, “Gestalt Psychology in the Soviet Union: The Period of Enthusiasm,” Psychological Research, 41 (1980): 113-32. Strenuous declarations of a “cultural-historical” emphasis, which is supposed to distinguish the school from Piaget, highlight the school's fearful avoidance of cultural-historical studies. For the first such unconvincing declaration of major difference from Piaget, see Vygotskii's long introduction to Piaget, , Rech’ i myshlenie rebenka (Moscow, 1932)Google Scholar. For the school's single significant venture into cultural-historical studies, see Luriia, A. R., Ob istoricheskom razvitii poznavatel'nykh protsessov (Moscow, 1974)Google Scholar, the report of a study of peasant mentalities carried out in 1931-32 and suppressed for forty years.

39. For a sanitized history of psychotechnics, see A. V. Petrovskii, Istoriia sovetskoi psikhologii (Moscow, 1967), pp. 266-92. For an unsanitized sample of the virulent attacks that destroyed the field in the 1930s, see Za marksistsko-leninskoe estestvoznanie, 1931, no. 2, pp. 34-84. For a review of renascent Soviet work in the field, see B. F., Lomov, “The Soviet View of Engineering Psychology,” Human Factors, 1969, no. 11, pp. 69–74Google Scholar; and Lomov, 's essay in Michael Cole and I. Maltzman, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology (New York, 1969)Google Scholar. Just recently Lomov replaced Vygotskian psychologists in control of major institutes. I thank James Wertsch for this news, which may signal a major shift of political support to a supposedly practical school of psychology.

40. Akademiia obshchestvennykh nauk pri TsK KPSS, kommunizma, Kafedra nauchnogo, Nauchnoe upravlenie obshchestvom (Moscow, 1967) 1: 3 Google Scholar. Compare Linda, Lubrano, Soviet Sociology of Science (Columbus, Ohio, 1976)Google Scholar; and Erik P., Hoffmann, “The ‘Scientific Management’ of Soviet Society” Problems of Communism, May-June 1977, pp. 59–67Google Scholar, and Hoffmann, , “Soviet Views of 'The Scientific-Technological Revolution,'” World Politics, July 1978, pp. 615–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Y. M., Rabkin, “'Naukovedenie'; The Study of Scientific Research in the Soviet Union” Minerva, 1977, no. 1/76, pp. 61–78.Google Scholar

41. See Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952).

42. For young Marx's famous dream, see The German Ideology (New York, 1947), p. 22. For a profound critique of psychological science as an ideology of alienation from that romantic ideal of human nature, see T. I. Rainov, “Otchuzhdenie deistviia,” Vestnik kommunisticheskoi akademii, 1925-26, nos. 13, 14, 15. On the abandonment of serious efforts to fuse mental and manual labor in the education process, see Medvedev, Let History Judge, pp. 503-505.

43. For a succinct history, see Anweiler, Oskar's essay in Anweiler and Ruffman, eds., Kulturpolitik der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart, 1973), pp. 34–39, 120-23 et passimGoogle Scholar; and Mervyn, Matthews, Education in the Soviet Union: Policies and Institutions Since Stalin (London, 1982)Google Scholar, especially pp. 153-61. For the most important current decree, issued August 20, 1969, see KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh (Moscow, 1972) 10: 77-80. Compare Katuntseva, N. M., Opyt SSSR po podgotovke intelligentsii iz rabochikh i krest'ian (Moscow, 1977)Google Scholar; and George Avis, “Preparatory Divisions in Soviet Higher Education Establishment: Ten Years of Radical Experiment,” unpublished paper distributed at the Second World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Garmisch, 1980; and Avis, “Social Class and Access to Full-time Higher Education in the Soviet Union,” M.Sc. diss., University of Bradford, Bradford, England; and T. A. Jones, “Higher Education and Social Stratification in the Soviet Union,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1978. See also Lane, David S. and O'Dell, Felicity, The Soviet Industrial Worker: Social Class, Education and Control (London, 1978), p. 103–104.Google Scholar

44. See James, Bowen, Soviet Education: Anton Makarenko and the Years of Experiment (Madison, Wisc., 1962)Google Scholar. On the state of opinion polls, see M. Dewhirst and R. Farrell, eds., The Soviet Censorship (Metuchen, N.J., 1973), pp. 122-26. The English translation of Makarenko's Pedagogical Poem is called The Road to Life (Moscow, 1951), 3 vols. The original is conveniently available in his Sochineniia (Moscow, 1957-58), 7 vols.

45. Ibid., 1:217-18. I have slightly altered the translation cited in the previous note.

46. See Susan G. Solomon, The Soviet Agrarian Debate: A Controversy in Social Science, 1923-1929 (Boulder, Colorado, 1977).

47. See n. 38 for the study of peasant mentalities in 1931-32 by Luriia and Vygotskii.

48. See references in Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair, pp. 10-13, and especially 360 n. 27.

49. The evidence is too massive to be cited here. See above, p. 577, for a little sampling. This is not simply a post-Stalin phenomenon. See, for instance, the reproaches to specialists for insufficient “daring” already in the 1930s. Cited in Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917-1932, p. 267 et passim.

50. There is an embarrassing richness of reports and analyses, by Western and Soviet scholars. See, for a beginning with many references, Judy, R. W., “The Economists,” in Skilling and Griffiths, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, 1971), pp. 209–52 Google Scholar. Compare Michael, Kaser, “Le débat sur le loi de la valeur … 1941-1953,” Annuaire de l’U.R.S.S. (Paris, 1965), pp. 555–69 Google Scholar, for evidence of a revival in 1943-48, which was then checked by Stalin and was resumed after his death. For more evidence of the complex development during Stalin's reign and after, see Robert, Campbell, “Marx, Kantorovich and Novozhilov, Stoimost’ versus Reality,” Slavic Review, 30, no. 3 (October 1961): 402–18Google Scholar. On the most recent developments, see Nove, Alec et al., “L'économie soviétique et les économistes soviéitiques,” Revue d'itudes comparatives est ouest, 12, no. 2 (1981): 121–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. See especially his Elementy postroeniia teorii meditsiny (Moscow, 1935), and the English version: A Basis for the Theory of Medicine (New York, 1944). Note the very restrained commemoration of him in Fiziologicheskii zhurnal SSSR, 1968, no. 12, pp. 1488-89.

52. Pravda, August 1, 1962.

53. The Maude translation of Tolstoi's “Death of Ivan Il'ich” adds explicit moralizing —“What is the right thing?” — to the stark metaphysics of the original: “Mozhno, mozhno sdelat’ ‘to.’ Chto 'to?’ — sprosil on sebia.” “One can do ‘that,’ one can. But what is ‘that?’ — he asked himself.” In Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, Tolstoi's metaphysical anguish is made to seem compatible with a “humanistic” version of “the medicalization of death,” as in Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth, On Death and Dying (New York, 1969)Google ScholarPubMed. Tolstoi would have disapproved very strongly.

54. I am borrowing from Wallace Stevens's “Connoisseur of Chaos.” See his Collected Poems (New York, 1975), pp. 215-16. Stevens's dialectics reaches tranquility in its union of opposites. The Stalinist mentality approaches hysteria.