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Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia

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The other reviewers on Amazon are correct about Malia's thesis, which essentially boils down to the Soviet Union as an ideologically driven country and that Communism doesn't work.

Malia leads the reader to the first period of soviet Communism as an instructive tool. Lenin's inauguration of the great soviet experiment brings War Communism and Russia's exit (as promised to the Germans) from the Great War (World War I). This first attempt at Communism fails with a shortage of crops and a (forced) famine in the Volga River valley. Lenin is forced to retreat from this unpopular policy and opts to bring Russia into the future with the NEP or the New Economic Policy. The NEP sought to modernize the Soviet Union in preparation for the "dialectic" movement into Communism.

There are those who want to claim that Lenin was a) a bad communist b) not a communist or c) a pure Marxist. Malia demonstrates, as well as one can point out in Lenin's own writings, that he is a pure Marxist. Thus Malia establishes a basis for his first thesis early on.

The Soviet Union would run its course by moving between the poles of War Communism (for the greater part of its short history) and market liberalization. Ultimately this paradigm led to perestroika and glasnost in 1986 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Malia in analyzing this phenomenon correctly picks out Ludwig von Mises classic essay on the problems of Economic Calculation in a Socialist Commonwealth. Mises important work of the early 1920's demonstrates that economic actors/agents and their actions are necessary to discover prices. And moreover if property rights are not conveyed, the decision making ability of the state becomes impossible. (There is no way to know what the customers want, let alone need because prices are what conveys surplus or shortage - any neoclassical economist with a government cost-benefit class under their belt would give you the same assessment.) This process leads to capital consumption, misdirected investment and worse yet, a crippling military expansionist state.

Got Breshnev?

Detractors deride this book as too simplistic. Mostly because their fragile vision of Marxism, debunked over and over again by economists, philosophers and history alike, proves once and for all that in reality Communism doesn't work. This reason alarms most social revolutionaries who are infatuated with a utopian future under a scientific veneer.

Yet, to recount the events of the Soviet Union demonstrates, despite claims to the contrary by Sovietologists, that their economic history was deplorable. Anyone can easily demonstrate this with a quick analysis of infant mortality and a decline in life expectancy. Insomuch, Malia correctly points out that the leaders, advisors and western economic fact finders were mislead by Soviet statistics.

Many modern Marxist (if there are any) critiques lay in the fact that the Soviet Union was only a nationalistic experience/experiment and therefore can not prove or disprove Marx central thesis. (It's not universal or global.) I do not think that any amount of evidence, historical or otherwise, will convince these detractors of the errors in their logic. They assume that global socialism can and will work and fatefully ignore or attempt to discredit the history of Malia or the economic reasoning of Hayek or von Mises.

I found Malia's book is accessible and readable, unlike other modern history books. He doesn't get hung up on insignificant details and as other reviews have noted sufficiently deals with possible problems in his own thesis. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a brief overview of the Soviet Union's short history.

This book, along with Richard Pipes' THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, ranks as one of the two most useful and enlightening treatments of the subject. Malia is no novice when it comes to Russian history, having written ALEXANDER HERZEN AND THE BIRTH OF RUSSIAN SOCIALISM many years ago. Unlike many other historians, who tend to euphemize when it comes to the subject of the USSR, Malia has the courage to refer to absurdities as absurdities. Other historians quite often discuss Soviet internal terrorism and irrational economic policies as things that HAD to be done, due to a variety of circumstances--as if these policies were either rational or sensible. Malia's analysis is far more astute; it demonstrates repeatedly that these "circumstances" were the RESULTS of trying to follow an irrational ideology and the fantastic economic policies that it dictated. One simply cannot understand the Soviet experience without emphasizing these points. Similarly, Malia shows that Stalinism was not an aberration, but an inevitable consequence of Lenin's model of government. The only way to keep such a state going was by terror, as Malia shows us. If the N.E.P. had been allowed to continue, the Leninist form of socialism in Russia would eventually have lapsed into Social Democratic reformism instead of the one-party dictatorship that alone could march along Lenin's path. It's no coincidence that either terror or economic collapse (or some mixture of both) have resulted everywhere the Leninist model has been tried; and Malia's most valuable contribution is showing us how and why this is so, and cannot be otherwise. As he pointed out, "socialism leads not to an assault on the specific abuses of 'capitalism' but to an assault on reality..." Of course, idle coffee-house intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky spend their lives trying to escape reality; for them, this is the whole point. Reality is too painful for them because it is a glaring reminder of the fact that they spend their hours reading and writing while others toil.

Although some readers might find the book's polemical style a bit off-putting, _The Soviet Tragedy_ is an excellent overview of both the failure of socialism in twentieth-century Russia and the failure of an earlier generation of Russian scholars to recognize the centrality of ideology to shaping the Bolshevik "experiment." While Malia's rhetorical atacks on the "revisonists" (i.e. social historians) of the 1970s and 1980s are, at times, a bit heated, he is correct in asserting that their own ideological fixation on demonstrating the "legitimacy" of 1917 and the Soviet regime's capacity for reform blinded them to the fundamental impossibility of reengineering society on the basis of Marx's utopian blueprint. An essential book for those already familiar with the broad outlines of 20th century Russian history.

Two theories--totalitarianism and revisionism--have emerged in Sovietology, attempting to define what comprises the correct application of socialism, and the particular aspects of Soviet socialism. Martin Malia, in his text The Soviet Tragedy-A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991, contends that the Soviet regime was logically totalitarian because totalitarianism is the natural outcome of any attempt to realize textbook Marxism. Stalinism thus represented the peak of the Soviet experiment. Malia argues that later regimes were merely watered-down versions of either Stalin's "hard" war communism or "soft" NEP-style market reforms of the 1920's. He focuses the argument on socialism's inherent flaws. Malia therefore opposes various revisionist claims that Russia, her leaders, and their faulty interpretations of Marxism led to the demise of Soviet socialism. These revisionist arguments imply that under different circumstances full integral socialism could have worked. Malia organizes his book around the major trends of the Soviet experience, while consistently attacking each revisionist claim. He clarifies points, separates utopianism from sober reality, and examines the political and economic costs of socialist policies. Because revisionism views the Marxist ideal sympathetically, Malia's anti-socialism arguments are essentially anti-revisionist.

The Soviet Tragedy by Martin Malia
Review: Wms (Jack R. Williams)

In this book, Dr. Malia provides his concept of the Soviet experience. He presents this as the early period that the Soviets said would lead to success in the end. Early on, they said there would first be a period of enormous upheaval and death, and finally a period of accomplishment and stability. In truth, the latter period was one of occupation of Eastern Europe and finally the inept administration of Gorbachev. The post-WWII period was also one of intense rivalry against the U.S. Nothing fails like a totalitarian regime that tries to reform itself. The Communists from the earliest days under Lenin were a killing machine, pure and simple. Krushchev had ambitions of reform but his initial attempts ended in quick failures and were quickly abandoned. Gorbachev was the only educated Soviet leader after Lenin but he was a `boob' that never understood Communism. He unintentionally weakened the Communist police state that could not survive his reforms. In the end, the system failed since it never attempted a consumer priority and it could not put food on the Russian table. It was an abject economic failure.

This is a great read that follows the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. It is well worth reading for anyone interested in the Communist era in Russia. It was one of the first books covering the entire Soviet period of about 75 years.

Make no mistake! Socialism and Communism are not dead. They lurk in many areas and in many minds. They are not centralized now but are threats in our future.

Ideology takes center stage in Martin Malia's comprehensive history of the Soviet period entitled The Soviet Tragedy. Malia's book exhaustively analyzes the Soviet "experiment" from its Marxist roots to its final implosion. Looking down at the "rubble" of socialism, Malia extends his argument of ideology combined with the central role of the Communist Party in crafting a top-down historical approach to Soviet history. Seen as an "ideocratic Partocracy" in the words of the author, indicate the dependence on ideology coupled with the dictatorship of the Party form the vehicle through which socialism operated. Published in 1994, Malia crafts a significant historical exploration into the exact nature of the Soviet Union.
Malia places much emphasis on the single-track delivery of integral socialism from which the Communist idea is derived into nationalization, collectivization, and planning (514). Lenin's vision encompassing socialism in maximalist terms also fills the Soviet state into the totalitarian mold. Communist Russia turned totalitarian because of its socialism, argues Malia. The author's argument fits the familiar mode of casting Stalin as the builder of socialism in centralizing all the power of the Party into his own hands, representing the peak of socialist power. Malia focuses on the continuity of the Soviet leadership from Lenin to Gorbachev. He renders the Stalin question obsolete because socialism's utopian essence, distinctly non-capitalist, was present before Stalin and continued through and after him. Thus to argue in favor of Bukharin, leads only to futility because building socialism excludes any hope of a market or NEP activity.
Malia focuses his argument on the choice of integral socialism and its determinate "genetic code," thus leaving a single trajectory of socialism headlined with War Communism and Lenin's NEP (16). The author asserts that the whole of Soviet history alternated between hard and soft communism exemplified in these two primary events. Again the role of ideology is central to his analysis. Because the regime was born into War Communism followed by the retreat of NEP, the utopian dream of universal equality could only lead to self-destruction. The Marxist-Leninist worldview progressed historically as the paradoxical pursuit of human equality through the "primitive military means of the partocracy." Malia sees the idea of Soviet socialism in Lenin the Founder as "ideological illusion and raw coercion," (494). Central to his argument, then is the military means to build communism. Malia writes, "From this `original sin' flowed all of the succeeding acts of coercion, starting with the revolution from above of 1929-1933, continuing with the purges, and culminating with the postwar restoration of the system," (495).
In writing the The Soviet Tragedy, Malia attacks traditional Sovietology that views the regime through a nearly opaque lens of capitalist political ideology and social science methodology. Malia answers traditional Sovietology with this impressive scholarship written solely from the point of view of politics inextricably paired with ideology. The complete lack of social or economic research could be seen as a deficiency by some. However, Malia should take the credit he deserves in penning the history of socialism in Russia as a comprehensive "experiment." Because the experiment failed for its ideology lends credibility to Malia's analytical approach. In "reconceptualizing" Soviet history, Malia critiques Western historiagraphy. Consequently, many of Malia's sources come from abroad. The author interpretation of the whole Soviet history may set a benchmark for an objective understanding of the fallen regime's political history. Social historians and economists may probe deeper into aspects of societal oppression and economic depression. In doing so, Malia's "objective" analysis may serve as an important catalyst for future historical scholarship. Indeed, the enigmatic qualities of Russia must be transcended for any unbiased scholarly exploration.

This book is based on two premises:

1. Marxism is bound to fail becasue it is inhrently flawed;

2. What other Sovietologists (Soviet and Western) have written is wrong. The author alone seems to know the truth that the rest of the world seems to have missed out on.

The first is a debatable point. There is some question about the rise of Socialism in Russia actually being Marxist.

The second point just makes me cringe. The author treats what most other authors take as major features and treats tham as minor points. For example, the Bolsheviks started on their radical program knowing that Marx had said that socialism would first come forth in an advanced industrial nation like Germany. The Bolsheviks hoped that their revolution would spread to other countries who would then support the Bolsheviks. As history has shown, that was not the case. Most authors on the subject point out that this was the starting point of the Bolshevik revolution and they had to adopt oth! ! er methods when it became obvious that the world-wide worker's revolution was not forthcoming.

All in all, I did not find this book very helpful in my search for understanding about the Soviet Union.