Russia and the World (2008)

Book Review from the May 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System. By Boris Kagarlitsky. Translated by Renfrey Clarke. Pluto Press, 2008. £40 / $60.

This is a Marxian analysis of Russian history, from Kievan Rus (ninth century) up to the present day. The author is a prominent left-wing writer, currently director of the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements in Moscow. 

It is not an easy book. Written originally for Russian readers, it assumes a basic knowledge of the facts of Russian history and concentrates on interpreting the most important of those facts. However, it is very stimulating and informative and well worth the effort that it demands.

The interpretation focuses on the evolution of economic interactions between Russia and other parts of the world. These interactions, according to Kagarlitsky, have been much more intensive and persistent than many historians have believed. Nor has Russia always been a backward country: Kievan Rus was far in advance of early medieval Western Europe. If Russia has been relatively underdeveloped in recent centuries, that is a product not of isolation but rather of the way it was integrated into the growing world capitalist system – as a dependent periphery, supplying raw materials to the world market. The “Soviet experiment” was a temporarily successful effort to break out of dependence and establish Russia as an independent industrial power. Now Russia has fallen back into its traditional niche in the world system.

  

One of the interesting points made is that the serfdom of the early capitalist period was quite different from feudal serfdom. Unlike the serfs of olden times, who lived in a natural economy, the serfs of the 18th and early 19th century were exploited in order to obtain grain for sale abroad. The author compares this semi-capitalist serfdom with slavery in the old American South, which was likewise oriented toward the world market, and also with the collective farm system under Stalin.

Kagarlitsky does not express a definite view regarding the nature of the Soviet socio-economic system. He clearly regards it as a functional substitute for private capitalism, which in Russian conditions was unable to industrialize and modernize the country. He does not claim it was socialism, but he seems to feel there was something socialist about it, especially at the start. The account of the early post-revolutionary period is perhaps the weakest section of the study.

Taken as a whole, however, this book is an impressive achievement. In contrast to many writers on Russia, Kagarlitsky knows not only Russian but also world history, and this enables him to view Russia in context as part of the world, not as a world apart. As socialists, we have no quarrel with his concluding sentences: “The fate of Russia is inseparable from the fate of humanity, and we can struggle for a better world for ourselves only through trying to build a better world for everyone. And this, of course, can also be said of any country.”

SDS