Andrey Zubov: Reasons for the Russian catastrophe of the 20th century and possibilities to overcome it. “History of Russia. XX Century”

 https://www.em.muni.cz/en/news/15876-roots-of-russia-s-catastrophes-lie-in-its-history-says-zubov

From Wednesday 19 October, the famous Russian historian Andrey Borisovich Zubov teaches a six-week course at Masaryk University titled Reasons for the Russian catastrophe of the 20th century and possibilities to overcome it. Over 100 MU students have signed up for the limited special series of lectures and nearly 4,000 others have already watched the lectures online.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Zubov

• A.B. Zubov, ed. (2017). История России XX век. Как Россия шла к ХХ веку. От начала царствования Николая II до конца Гражданской войны (1894-1922). (History of Russia. XX Century. Russia's Journey into the XX Century from the beginning of Nicolay II Reign to the End of the Civil War (1894-1922)). Vol. 1 (3000 экз ed.). Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN 978-5-699-89930-2.
• A.B. Zubov, ed. (2017). История России XX век. Эпоха Сталинизма (1923-1953). History of Russia. XX Century. Stalin's Epoch (1923-1953)). Vol. 2. Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN 978-5-699-92087-7.
• A.B. Zubov, ed. (2017). История России ХХ век. Деградация тоталитарного государства и движение к новой России (1953 — 2008). (History of Russia. XX Century. Degradation of a Totalitarian State and Movement towards a New Russia (1953 — 2008)). Vol. 3. Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN 978-5-699-93347-1.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/arts/25iht-russia.html

“History of Russia. XX Century” the books try to rise above ideologically charged clashes over Russia’s historical memory. They are critical both of czarist and Communist Russia, and incorporate the history of Russian emigration and the Russian Orthodox Church into the big picture of a chaotic, violent century. While written from a clearly Christian perspective — one author is a Russian Orthodox priest — the history avoids overt nationalism or anti-Semitism.

Eminent historians in the United States and Poland who often take a critical view of Russia’s passionate, partisan discussion of history lauded its balance.

“Nothing like it has ever been published in Russia,” Richard Pipes, the Harvard University Sovietologist, wrote in an e-mail message, noting that he was trying to raise money for a translation and publication in English. “It is a remarkable work: remarkable not only for Russia but also for Western readers. For one, it has gotten away from the nationalism so common in Russian history books, according to which the Russians were always the victims of aggression, never aggressors.”

Mr. Pipes noted that it made extensive use of Western sources — rare in Russia — and praised its attention to often overlooked questions of the role of morals and religious beliefs.

Others offered similar praise.

“This is one of the most important books that came to us from Russia in the past 20 years,” said Andrzej Nowak, a historian from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. In an e-mail message, he praised “the exemplary way” it treated sensitive topics like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the wartime agreement between Hitler and Stalin; the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939; and the mass murder of Polish officers at Katyn.

Professor Zubov used a recent presentation of his work at a Roman Catholic cultural center to emphasize that Russians needed to make up their own minds about history, and not adopt the latest spoon-fed version.

“The moment has come to say finally whether we are with the Soviet Union and all of its deeds, or whether we are victims of the Communist regime and, correspondingly, reject its deeds as alien to us,” Mr. Zubov said in an interview in his book-lined Moscow apartment. “This moment has come and we can no longer turn our back on it.”

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New! 06/02/2023- Google-translated from the Russian into the English- all 3 volumes of  “History of Russia. XX Century” - The History of Russia. XX century - Andrey Zubov-Google translated.epub

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From Volume I-  Introductory chapter. How Russia went to the twentieth century

In the twentieth century, a catastrophe occurred in our country. In 1917–1954 tens of millions of the best citizens of Russia were killed by the Russian people themselves, and millions of others were expelled from the country. Unbearable living conditions, hunger, poverty and repression led to the fact that many people preferred not to create families, not to have children. In 1939, the people of Russia found themselves drawn into a terrible world war that cost us tens of millions of new lives. In the 20th century, the country lost, according to our estimates, 95 percent of its cultural treasures, many natural resources, and finally, in 1991, fell apart. The current Russian Federation, both in terms of population and inhabited territory, is a little more than half of the Russia that was at the beginning of the 20th century. The 20th century is the most tragic century for Russia.

The consequences of the 20th century are far from being overcome by us. Russian society is now rising with great difficulty after the heavy blows that it experienced in the last century. But why such troubles have befallen our homeland?

The catastrophe of the 20th century did not happen by chance and not suddenly: events of this magnitude could not help but be prepared for decades. Indeed, many astute Russian people, starting with Radishchev, Pushkin, Lermontov, Khomyakov, and later Dostoevsky, Vladimir Solovyov, the authors of the collection "Milestones" (1909) and some smart foreigners predicted a terrible Russian revolt, "senseless and merciless" that could destroy our country. The predictions of these thinkers were not unfounded. They knew Russian history well, contemporary Russia and the processes taking place in other countries of the world. They saw a lot of untruth in Russian life. What is the source of untruth?

Any society in any era will be strong and indestructible if the people that make it up help each other, take care of each other, respect each other's freedom and put the common interest above their own. Such relationships are called solidarity . . Where people put their interests first and do not care about their neighbors, both the family and the state are destroyed. In an army of selfish people, who will go to die for the fatherland? The principle of solidarity is universal, but for Christians it is an obligatory law of faith. The Church, led by Jesus Christ, is built on love and sacrifice. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,” the Lord teaches [Jn. 13.35]. For a society that considers itself Christian, solidarity is absolutely indispensable. It is a projection of the Church into social and political relations. Was Russian society solidary?

Thinker's opinion:

“In the Russian soul ... there is no creative acceptance of history, as a feat, as a journey, as things are ... In the Russian experience of history, the importance of impersonal, even unconscious, some kind of elemental forces, “organic processes”, “the power of the earth”, is always exaggerated rather in the passive voice, more happens than happens... The category of responsibility falls out... In the history of Russian thought, this irresponsibility of the people's spirit is expressed with particular force. And in it is the plot of the Russian tragedy of culture. This is a Christian tragedy... The tragedy of free sin, the tragedy of blinded freedom... the tragedy of mystical infidelity and inconstancy. This is a tragedy of spiritual slavery and obsession…” – Archpriest Georgy Florovsky. Ways of Russian theology. Paris, 1988. - S. 502.

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From Volume III-

Reunification of historical space

(Instead of conclusion)

Summing up the results of our history in the 20th century, it should be recognized that they are very disappointing. This century has passed with us according to the words of the song: “And we sowed millet, sowed, and we trample millet, trample.” Indeed, this century was a time of catastrophes and destruction: the unsuccessful war with Japan (1904-1905), the first revolution (1904-1905), the First World War (1914-1918), the abdication of Nicholas II, the February Revolution, the October coup of 1917, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship and terror (1918), the Civil War (1918–1922), the destruction of the state system, the Church, civil society, Stalinism, purges and concentration camps, tens of millions of victims; the second invasion of Germany in 1941, for which the country was not prepared (despite the assurance of the communists that “the border is locked”), again tens of millions of victims, destruction of the country; certainly a heroic victory over Germany, but at what cost! Unsuccessful Khrushchev experiments, again the destruction of hundreds of churches, the Brezhnev stagnation, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, chaos in the economy and politics in the nineties, a demographic catastrophe ...

When you remember all this, you wonder why our richest country, with such a talented people, was unable to build a normal state system and a normal economy for a hundred years . Why, say, the Germans, who so disastrously lost the last war, live incomparably better than the Russians, although they have neither gas nor oil? What's the matter? Until we answer these questions, we will repeat the same historical mistakes.

Strictly speaking, the question here is simple: what do we strive for and what do we want? In the life of every person, this is a fateful question - what is the purpose of my life, what is its meaning?

What have we been striving for for most of the last century? To build a communist utopia, to build the most powerful, biggest superpower in the world. As expected from a utopia, it ended up falling apart, and the superpower fell apart, and we were left with nothing at the end of the 20th century. Plus tens of millions of victims of this experiment.

"Rus, where are you going? Give an answer. It doesn’t give an answer, ”Nikolai Gogol wrote in the conclusion of the first part of Dead Souls in 1842. More than one hundred and sixty years have passed since then, but Russia has not given an answer to this day.

After all, it would seem that the goal of the state should be the welfare of its citizens, prosperity, by the way, not only material, but also spiritual. Such well-being can be built only if we strive for the social unity of the people, set its solidarity as the goal. In his report on the topic “The Russian Idea”, read in Paris in 1888, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov said: “The great social unity, broken by nations and states, cannot be preserved for a long time for individuals. Since human society no longer exists for each person as some organic whole, of which he feels himself to be a solidary part, social ties become external and arbitrary boundaries for the individual, against which he revolts and which he eventually discards.

This, in fact, is what one should strive for - towards an organically whole society, towards national unity, of which each member feels himself a solidary part. Without this social upheaval will continue. All sections of the population, in particular, the most privileged, are interested in national unity.

But let's not forget the spiritual aspect of this problem. Another Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote in his book The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism (1937): “Bread for me is a material matter, bread for another is a spiritual matter.” But the spiritual question cannot be resolved only in the social plane. This was the fatal mistake of the Russian Social Democrats, the future Bolsheviks. They thought to solve social problems by purely materialistic methods. We have seen what this led to. The same Berdyaev, in his article “The Spiritual Foundations of the Russian Revolution”, written by him back in 1917 (what insight!) writes: “The spiritual bourgeoisness of socialism, its slavery to social matter, its denial of values, its inability to rise above the limited goal of human well-being for purposes farther and higher, is absolutely undoubted and is being discovered more and more. And least of all, one can look for antidotes against this bourgeoisness in the idea of ​​a social revolution, which is born of the slavery of the spirit. This is what our historical task boils down to: how can we free ourselves from the slavery of the spirit, how can we separate truth from falsehood? Let the study of the tragic 20th century of our history serve as a visual aid in this fatal process.

In the 20th century, our country experienced a terrible tragedy: it seemed to have lost itself, its original spiritual face . A significant part of the intelligentsia and the elite in general was deliberately destroyed, deported or fled abroad. Our spiritual guidelines were destroyed and replaced. After the collapse of communism, the country found itself in a deep crisis.

Russian emigration partially managed to preserve and increase our Russian spiritual values, but in extremely difficult conditions, in isolation from their native soil and in the process of gradual assimilation. On the Russian land itself, of course, representatives of the tradition, fragments of true Russia, have also been preserved. And it's time to put these stones together. This is, of course, a long and difficult process. But we have no other way.

The history of Russia in the 20th century, especially the history of the thirty-fifth anniversary from 1917 to 1953, is extremely tragic, and it is excruciatingly painful to study it. Therefore, many do not want to know about it. But if the descendants do not empathize with their ancestors, then the torments of the ancestors will be in vain. Empathy is necessary for the historical unity of the nation. Unity cannot be built on varnished myths – myths will disintegrate anyway. Unity can only be built on the search for truth.