Russlands gescheiterte Revolutionen Von d. Dekabristen bis zu d. Dissidenten

by Adam B. Ulam

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Genres: History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Adam Bruno Ulam was a Polish-American historian and political scientist at Harvard University. Ulam was one of the world's foremost authorities on Russia and the Soviet Union, and the author of twenty books and many articles.

Reviews

[timnc15 · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Unfinished Revolution" is a 1960 book tracing the Industrial Revolution origins of Marxism and communism through to the Khrushchev era of the Cold War. It first outlines the key tenets of Marxism, such as the focus on material factors, the division of the population into classes based on possession of labor, and the Hegelian dialectic that pushes history towards its end-state of a communist utopia. Ulam then discusses the interactions of early Marxism with liberalism and trade unionism, particularly in industrialized England where Marx’s theory predicted Marxism would be most successful. In doing so, Ulam insightfully highlights the opposing components that give Marxism its appeal, as it acts as both a conservative rejection of the alienation caused by industrialization while also championing industrialization and modernization in search of better material conditions and the communist utopia that it predicts. After the ultimate defeat of Marxism at the hands of English liberalism, Ulam contrasts the English example with models of anarchism and socialism in France, Spain, and Germany before moving on to the continuing Russian example. Ulam explains how Leninism’s revolutionary vanguard synthesized Marxism’s opposing needs for “popular” revolution and the need for authoritarian state control of industrialization after said revolution. He then goes on to examine how that ideology evolved into the totalitarianism of Stalinism, which discarded the democratic elements of Marxism in favor of pure industrialization, however inefficient and brutal. Ultimately, Ulam argues that Marxism should be viewed both as an ideology and as a method of industrialization that far surpasses liberalism in its ability to capture the hearts and minds of populations alienated by rapid industrialization and modernization, especially in the developing world. Conversely, he warns that the Soviet Union’s Marxist patience may deteriorate in the wake of Stalinism, combining with Russian nationalism to present a more potent and aggressive threat to the world at large. As a result, this book is a fascinating intellectual examination of Cold War-era understandings of the conception, growth, and predictions for the future of Marxism from a strictly European perspective.

It's a very tough read, especially when tracking all of the theoretical offshoots and rivals of Marxism during its early years and competition with English liberalism. However, I felt like this was a worthwhile read for anyone who really wants to understand the relationships between socialism, Marxism, Leninism, liberalism, trade unionism, and communism more broadly (though I do wish it discussed the fundamental differences between Russian communism and the peasant, agrarian nature of the Maoist thought that dominated Asia at the time).