Europe - Civilization, Soviet Union - Espionage, Asia - Civilization, Communism by Region, Public Opinion - Regional, Russia - History - General & Miscellaneous, 1917 - 1991 (Soviet Union) - History, Russia & Former Soviet Union - Politics & Government
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Overview
As the dust clears from the fall of Communism, will Western eyes see Russia, the unclaimed orphan of Western history or Russia as she truly is, a perplexing but undeniable member of the European family? A dazzling work of intellectual history by a world-renowned scholar, spanning the years from Peter the Great to the fall of the Soviet Union, this book gives us a clear and sweeping view of Russia not as an eternal barbarian menace but as an outermost, if laggard, member in the continuum of European nations.
The Russian troika hurtles through these pages. The Spectre, modernity's belief in salvation by revolutionary ideology, haunts them. Alice's looking glass greets us at this turn and that. Throughout, Martin Malia's inspired use of these devices aptly conveys the surreality of the whole Soviet Russian phenomenon and the West's unbalanced perception of it. He shows us the usually distorted images and stereotypes that have dominated Western ideas about Russia since the eighteenth century. And once these emerge as projections of the West's own internal anxieties, he shifts his focus to the institutional structures and cultural forms Russia shares with her neighbors.
Here modern Europe is depicted as an East-West cultural gradient in which the central and eastern portions respond to the Atlantic West's challenge in delayed and generally skewed fashion. Thus Russia, after two centuries of building then painfully liberalizing its Old Regime, in 1917 tried to leap to a socialism that would be more advanced and democratic than European capitalism. The result was a cruel caricature of European civilization, which mesmerized and polarized the West for most of this century. As the old East-West gradient reappears in genuinely modern guise, this brilliantly imaginative work shows us the reality that has for so long tantalized—and eluded—Western eyes.
Editorials
Boston Globe
In an elegant intellectual history...the historian Martin Malia turns his eye to the European cultural, political, and social traditions that have produced assessments of Russia within those two broad molds. Russia under Western Eyes holds up a two-way mirror that sheds light not just on Russia but on Europe's own cultures and institutions, from the Enlightenment to Fascism.Foreign Affairs
If the great unanswered question for Russia is whether to join the West, the reader will find no better book to explain the issues at stake. This is not because the author's controversial thesis--that Russia has been part of the West since Peter the Great and has nowhere else to go--is self-evidently correct. Instead, the book's merit is the brilliance with which Malia explores the intellectual and cultural links between Europe and Russia, from Voltaire to Nietzsche to Thomas Mann to Jean-Paul Sartre. When the West has gotten Russia wrong, as he believes it usually has, the reason resides less in Russia's mysteriousness and more in the emotional and intellectual needs of Western thinkers...Every page shimmers with compressed and polished insight. His analysis towers over the conventional wisdoms about Russia, including both those spun by Russians seeking solace in the uniqueness of Russia and those propagated by others who see Russia as alien to the West.Gabriel Schoenfeld
...even if Mr. Malia's book is not always a model of clarity, the historical looking glass it wields is a powerful device.— The Wall Street Journal
Richard Pipes
...Malia...makes many interesting and perceptive observations....[However, the] rising tide of anti-Westernism in Russia suggests that its citizens are far from being as confident of their European credentials as is the author of Russia Under Western Eyes. —The New RepublicS.Frederick Starr
If you read only one book on post-Soviet Russia, this might be it....[T]he author helps European and American readers understand how they think about Russia....Malia's book reveals him to be an unreconstructed and unapologetic moralist....[H]e challenges us to look into ourselves before peering into Russia.—WQ: The Wilson Quarterly
Washington Post Book World
Malia brings vast erudition to his assault on many 'less rational Western reactions' to Russia, insisting that only Bolshevism represented a true fusion of the state with a messianic idea. Even Russia's Pan-Slavism, when it gathered momentum in the second half of the 19th century, originated outside the Winter Palace and never became the official objective of state policy. Only Lenin managed to turn Russia into something it has never been before--a revolutionary state determined to bring down the entire international system--and cut her off from her steady movement closer to the West. The subtext of Malia's argument is that the Soviet period must be looked upon as 'the great aberration' in Russia's development and that we should look upon her in a pan-European context as we define our relations with the post-Communist rulers.Washington Times
An intellectual historian of the first magnitude, Mr. Malia strides confidently through the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Neo-Romanticism, the 'notion of "civilization,"' modernization theory, 'demotic tyrannies' (the great threat to the democratic ideal), nationalism and the shaky phenomenon of systematic social science...[Russia Under Western Eyes] is one of the most intelligent, challenging, dynamic works ever from a Western scholar of Russian history.Publishers Weekly
Malia, an emeritus professor of history at UC-Berkeley, traces Western perceptions of Russia from Peter the Great to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, paying special attention to how the West's view of Russia has shifted not just as a reaction to changes in Russia but to changes within Europe as well. Europe has viewed Russia as either enlightened and progressive (during the reign of Catherine the Great and the early Soviet period) or as despotic and backward (under Nicholas I and Stalin). Malia persuasively argues how these changes in the West's perception of Russia have been due as much to shifts in European politics and thought, such as the revolutions of 1848 and the transformation from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, as to changes within Russia itself. Unfortunately, Malia can be long-winded (an analysis of Hegelian philosophy, for example, delves into much greater detail than necessary), and his writing, which is usually lively and evocative, occasionally lapses into literary pretentiousness. A prologue to the chapter on the Soviet period takes the form of a Greek drama with a cast of Soviet leaders and poets and ends with a twist on Alice in Wonderland: Russia is the Red Queen (or in Malia's words, "Red Khan"), which "really was a kitten, after all." Despite these weaknesses, Malia's comprehensive and accessible history of Russia will interest scholars and general readers alike. (Apr.)Library Journal
Malia (history, emeritus, Univ. of California, Berkeley; The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, LJ 4/1/94) uses an intellectual approach to explain the West's evolving perceptions of Russia. In his quest to summarize the length and breadth of his considerable historical knowledge, he uses historical buzzwords and foreign phrases liberally, but his stated purpose--"to transcend the presumed polarity between Russia and Europe by proposing a definition of Russia's place within Europe"--is never fully realized. Contrast his approach to that of Gregory Freeze in Russia: A History (LJ 5/1/98), and one finds Malia very difficult to navigate. Malia does have his salient moments, as when he describes socialism not as a "descriptive historical term or social-science category; it is a verbal standard raised to mobilize the disaffected and excluded of modern society." An interesting but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to pull European and Russia history together into an intellectual exercise.--Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. System, IolaJack F. Matlock, Jr.
...Malia takes on and demolishes...cliches about what went wrong in Russia....[and] offers a devastating critique of Marxist Socialism and its various offshoots....[He] does not attempt to predict Russia's future. His conviction that history often takes unexpected turns would prohibit his doing so....[This is] the most insightful book published...to date on Russia's place in European intellectual and political history.— The New York Times Book Review
Richard Pipes
...Malia...makes many interesting and perceptive observations....[However, the] rising tide of anti-Westernism in Russia suggests that its citizens are far from being as confident of their European credentials as is the author of Russia Under Western Eyes.— The New Republic
S. Frederick Starr
If you read only one book on post-Soviet Russia, this might be it....[T]he author helps European and American readers understand how they think about Russia....Malia's book reveals him to be an unreconstructed and unapologetic moralist....[H]e challenges us to look into ourselves before peering into Russia.— WQ: The Wilson Quarterly
John Searle
Malia writes with stunning erudition... This book is a prerequisite to understanding the main historical events of the twentieth century.— Times Literary Supplement
Kirkus Reviews
Veteran Russian scholar Malia (professor emeritus of history at Univ. of Calif., Berkeley) argues Russia's rightful membership in the family of European nations in a study dominated by anti-Soviet rhetoric. Others refrain from passing judgment on historical events as recent as the past decade, but not Malia. Declaring communism the "great blind alley of our century," he offers a blistering attack on the Russian communist experiment. The Russian Revolution, he declares, "left behind nothing but rubble, wormwood, and squalor." Malia's triumphal autopsy of the Soviet system is irritating, if not questionable, but it constitutes but one part of the author's ambitious project—that of examining how Russia's path has converged with or diverged from that of Western Europe during the past three centuries. In a sweeping but plodding narrative, Malia describes how various European nations (because the West was no monolith) have reacted to Russian/Soviet politics and culture. Reflecting the status of enigma that Malia attributes to Russia, Western attitudes varied tremendously over time, ranging from dismissive Orientalism (in response to Russian autocracy and brutality) to "intoxicated" enthusiasm or idealism (for its enlightened despots, its authors, and its communism). Frequently, as Malia is wont to point out, Western views of Russia have been misguided. The West has tended to view this incomprehensible stranger through a looking glass, as human beings often do. Malia's book thus offers a different perspective on European trends and attitudes. Yet the value of Russia Under Western Eyes as a synthesis of Russian-European trends is undermined by Malia's anticommunist bias. The narrative styleis stuffy, fussy, and too bogged down with "therefores" and "indeeds" to appeal to the general reader. It is a work flawed by its author's impatience to judge and by his pedantic lecturing on subjects already familiar.Book Details
Published
May 5, 1999
Publisher
Cambridge, MA : The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.
Pages
528
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780674781207