Professor Robert Service (St Antony's College)

'The Soviet Union in the European Mirror, 1917-1991'

Professor Service focused on the way in which the reality of the Soviet Union had been portrayed in Europe during the existence of the Soviet state. This reality had first been described in the writings of journalists and travellers. It had been only in the 1930�s that a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet state and society had begun to emerge. During this period works of lasting value on the subject had been produced, not by Westerners, but by emigr�s, especially the Mensheviks and Trotsky, who had contributed significantly to the debate in Europe. The deepest insight into Soviet reality had emerged in Prague, Berlin and Paris, where many emigr�s had settled. (By comparison, London had lagged behind in serious study of the subject.) The emigr�s had posed several basic questions about Russian historical continuity, the plausibility of economic modernisation in the Soviet Union, the validity of defining the state as a socialist or a bureaucratic monolith, and the probability of the state enduring. World War II had had important repercussions for the way in which the Soviet Union had been perceived by the West. The Soviet Union had broken the backbone of Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945, and had emerged as one of the �big three�, and then of the �big two�, in the post-war era. The state�s durability had appeared evident. The Soviet Union had also emerged as a potential model for development in the Third World. Travel writing had waned as visitors were denied access to most parts of the Soviet Union. Reports in the older style were now received mostly from Gulag escapees. The debate in Europe about the Soviet Union had been West European, as East Europeans had not been allowed to take part in discussing these issues until the end of the 1980s. And yet, the Western European reflection of Soviet reality had remained a cracked mirror of divided opinions. The most analytical scholarship in Europe had begun to emerge in Britain but, unlike in the US, scholarship in Britain had not been enormously polemical. This had begun to change mainly in the 1970s when a new generation of scholars had claimed that they had challenged the view that the Soviet Union should be understood from the top down. They had argued that politics in the Soviet Union had been messy and ungovernable in contrast with the orderly model first proposed in the post-war years. This had led to the question of whether the Soviet Union could reform itself. And if it could, how peaceful the movements for change would turn out to be. While British research had often been empirical, it had also been insular and had overlooked interesting studies undertaken on the Continent where Euro-communists in particular had sought to gauge the reformability of the Soviet system. All analysts had at this point been looking at institutions, classes and �lites to explain the dynamic complexity of the Soviet order, but no practical conclusions had been reached in Western Europe (and serious debate continued to be inhibited in Eastern Europe until 1989). Outside academic institutions, however, a growing consensus prevailed. With the fall of the USSR the tenor of comment by journalists, politicians, general observers - and authors of school textbooks in Russia itself - had become surprisingly uniform: the Soviet Union had been a �totalitarian nightmare� from start to finish, with little or no internal differentiation. Interest in the USSR had become less vibrant in Western Europe, but in Eastern Europe it had remained high, partly because of �lustration� processes. Nowadays, in Europe as a whole, debates at a political level on the communist past ceased to have much impact. The questions of French and Italian communist links with Stalin were exceptions to the rule. Generally, the Soviet period was not seen as enigmatic, which was a pity, and historians of Russia should try to counteract this view. Professor Service ended by saying that, in order to understand the present, we needed to understand the complexity of the past.

Dr Polly Jones (St Antony�s College)

'From �Bolshevik� to �European�:evolving a model for the treatment of the Soviet past in post-Soviet Russia'

Dr Jones outlined a model for the treatment of the Soviet past in post-Soviet Russia. She pointed out that one of the bizarre features of post-communism in Russia had been the striking absence of complete transition from Soviet symbols, and this had led some to question whether such absence had been proof of transition failure. She argued that the

endurance of such symbols, and apparent inertia towards them, concealed processes of paradigm shifts of actual discourse, which were leading to a more respectful conservationist attitude and an approach of renegotiation, bringing a tolerance of political complexity and historical diversity. After 1991, the terms �Europe�, �civilisation� and �respect for the past�had become political footballs, notably over the well-known case of the Lenin mausoleum. By contrast, symbols of communism in the outer Soviet Republics and Eastern Europe had been attacked and dismantled in the early 1990s. In Russia, the consensus in newspapers had been that many artifacts of the cult of Lenin had been shameful and should have been removed, even before 1991. Frenzied vandals had been portrayed as uncivilised barbarians by conservative and liberal newspapers, and iconoclasm seen as the opposite of the drive to Europeanise. Some had believed, however, that single monuments were preferable to the thousands of Lenin, and had questioned whether the European ideal might in this case have supported iconoclasm

At the sight of the anarchic White House coup, observers had made a distinction between political opposition and vandalism. Emergency legislation had brought in harsh new penalties against attacks on monuments. There had been a notion amongst Russian that vandalism was almost dangerously compulsive, and they had held a nearly pathological fear of �acting Bolshevik�. There was broad based support for the European ideal of civilised commemoration; in 1991, public opinion surveys had shown that a majority opposed the destruction and removal of monuments and were in favour of conservation. The Lenin Mausoleum had been the focus of a long drawn out controversy, in which the charge of �backwardness� had been volleyed back and forth. There had been other factors involved in the endurance of these symbols, including apathy and genuine affection for them. The role of language, the Western European �elsewhere�, however, had provided an alternative for tolerance. After 1991 these European values had become agents for division between political opponents and consequently had devalued the very concepts that might have provided a basis for a stable post-Soviet approach to symbols.

Professor Gabriel Gorodetsky (University of Tel-Aviv)

'Persisting Factors in Russian Relations with the West'

Professor Gorodetsky took a longue dur�e approach that emphasized the links between EU and US perspectives on today�s events in Russia. He argued that the challenge facing Russia in forging a new foreign policy reflected its attempt to reconcile national interests with a very diffuse new world order and conflicting forces of globalization and regionalization. While in the early 1990s there had been a tendency to write off Russia as a major power, one now had to ask to what extent Russia had undergone a genuine metamorphosis. In answering this question, attention should be paid to the legacy of historical and geopolitical factors in the generation of Russian conceptions of its national interest. Russia�s view of its role in world affairs had been formed around lingering preconceived ideas relating to historical and cultural factors, among which its relations with the US were paramount. The process of redefining its sovereignty was, first of all, a problem of its immediate �sphere of influence�. The present social and political unrest of its neighbours threatened to spill over into Russia. In terms of its relationship with the US, one had to recognize the prevalence of traditional power politics in the tendency of Russian policy-makers and politicians to make alliances to counterbalance US power.

The options for such alliances, for example with the EU, were not particularly substantial, as their foreign policy goals and approaches were very different. The EU offered an increasingly diffuse union lacking any consistent premises of foreign policy. Russia needed first and foremost to be in a position to control an enormous space and an unevenly populated territory with very long borders. Russia�s aim in Chechnya was the preservation of an indivisible Russian federation. The recent history of Kosovo had also demonstrated the aims and limits of Russian foreign policy. But it no longer entertained an image of a benign post-Cold War era. Whether the desire for great power status is today �politically correct� or not it continues to best depict the drive of Russian foreign policy. The notion that politics and high security issues had been replaced by low security issues in Russia should be challenged, as Russia still demonstrated a desire to retain great power status. Moscow continues to maintain that globalization was often manipulated by the US in favour if its own national interests. Consequently, Russia was attempting to function within the framework of globalization while forging regional alliances and making new alignments with Europe. Financial and economic aid that had been given to Russia was seen as forcing Moscow to accept Western supervision over its domestic and foreign policies. In conclusion Prof. Gorodetsky argued that in order to fit within the �new world order� Russia adhered to the new defused ideology of globalization while, not unlike the United States, reverting to power politics and balance of power as its �modus operandi�.