Moshe Lewin

Moshe Lewin , born in 1921 with Vilnius in Poland, is a historian specialist in the the USSR. He is to some extent the founding father of the social Histoire of the USSR, and particularly of the Stalinist period . Its work was a reference and a source of inspiration for the “Soviétologues” pertaining to the school known as “Révisionniste”.

Biography

Of Jewish origin, his/her parents were victims of the policy of extermination of the Nazi Germany, while its safety with the Red Army owed him. Mr. Lewin lived in the USSR during the Second world war, then emigrated in 1945 in Israel, where its political ideas pushed it towards the Sionisme of left. He obtains a license with the Université of Tel-Aviv in 1961.

Arrived to France, it supports in 1964 its thesis of doctorate to the Sorbonne under the direction of the historian Roger Portal. It is then influenced by the school of Annals. It becomes of 1965 to 1966 director of studies associated with the Life section with the practical École with the high studies (which was autonomisée in 1975 to become the École of the high studies in social sciences), then of 1967 to 1968 '' senior fellow '' with the Université of Columbia. From 1968 to 1978, it is Teacher-researcher with the Université of Birmingham in England, where it taught the Soviet history and the policy. He emigrates then in the United States and becomes professor of history to the Université of Pennsylvania.

He could turn over to the USSR only in 1986, date from which he lengthily remained with Moscow. He took his retirement and was named Professor emeritus in 1995.

Research

Moshe Lewin caused many vocations in the field of the social history, in particular starting from the publication, in 1966, of its thesis of doctorate on the Collectivisation of agriculture in the USSR (translated into English since 1968). In the line of the school of Annals, its approach is resolutely Interdisciplinaire. Moshe Lewin sought with “dépolitiser the speech on the USSR”, in the direction where it was necessary according to him

“to cease privileging the political power and the instruments of this capacity (State, party, ideology) as single source of analysis. There is not a side a capacity, a State which imposes its will, which gives orders and other a directed company, atomized, “not planned” which obeys. Actually, the things are a little more complex: the company can and can impose its moods and inflect kind the course of a policy. It seems to me that it would be necessary, under this angle, to revise all the history of the Soviet Union (and for a share of Russia tsarist also) - including the period of the Thirties”.

Against the tradition then dominant of the school centered on the concept of Totalitarianism, Mr. Lewin showed the need and the possibility of a social history which evaluates the complex relationship between the mode and the categories of the population. The dimension idéologico-policy which was hypertrophied in interpretation “totalitarist” is not absent from its research, but she is studied starting from this social substrate.

The turning of the years 1920

In his work on the collectivization of agriculture, Mr. Lewin analyzes in-depth the economic debate of the years 1920, which in particular confronted the opponents and the partisans of NEP. He presents a capacity Bolshevik animated by a will to modernize and control the agricultural world, considered to be antiquated and refractory with socialism. The mode used, in a true escape ahead, methods increasingly authoritative and violent because it ran up against the resistance of the peasants. The war carried out by the State against the peasants thus ended in the installation of néo-feudal ratios in the campaigns.

At the time of its second work, Mr. Lewin gave an account of the combat of Lénine during the last years of his life. The historian was pressed in particular on the “Will of Lénine”, name given to the whole of the texts written by Lénine in December 1922 and January 1923, of which writings where it made share, right before his death, of his visions and its forecasts for the future of the Soviet mode. Lénine then hoped for a return of the moral health of the official machine, but its efforts remained vain. According to the author, the strategy of modernization centralized in a backward country involved a degeneration towards a system oppressive Bureaucratique which was difficult to avoid.

The origin of Stalinism

The collection of articles of Mr. Lewin entitled the Formation of the Soviet system constitutes a plea for the social history and proposed many tracks of research to be explored. Mr. Lewin was a pioneer in the study of the social history of the Stalinisme. He endeavoured to analyze Stalinism like a complex phenomenon, having social and cultural roots clean and registered in the long life of the Russian history. The Révolution Bolshevik basically did not constitute a rupture in the Histoire of Russia. Mr. Lewin does not analyze Stalinism like the product of an ideology, nor like the product of the revolution of 1917, but like the result of a heavy heritage and a conflict between modernity and tradition. This conflict tormented Russia at least since the medium of the XIX° century: the “great reform” of 1861, by which Alexandre II of Russia proclaimed the abolition of the Servage, “can be taken as starting point to include/understand what was to finally lead to 1917. ” Mr. Lewin interprets the revolution Bolshevik, then Stalinist, like a process of Modernization of the country, made necessary since the capacity tsarist had been unable to ensure to conclude it. The historian analyzed the paradoxical situation in which the Bolcheviks were found. They had seized the power in a country before any peasant and had not received the contest of a Western revolution, which placed them in an intolerable situation from a point of view Marxiste: they were only a “Superstructure” suspended in the airs, deprived of the necessary industrial and proletarian base to conclude the Socialisme. Mr. Lewin insisted on the determining influence of the Russian civil war (1918-1920), which was revealing major conflicts and involved a “archaisation” of Russia.

There was a confrontation between a State turned towards modernization and a farming community folded up on itself, leant with its traditions. The Russian peasant, the mujik, was of a great weight on the history of the USSR, by the fact of perpetuating the imperial past. The worship of Stalin was a resurgence of popular attitudes with regard to the Autocratie. In the same way, the Stalinist vision manichéenne and the Procès of Moscow took their roots in the popular religion. The despotic characteristics of Stalinism were the product of the bureaucratic and authoritative tradition Russian, of the personal features of Stalin, combined with the destruction of the political movements and social autonomous.

Permanence or evolution?

Mr. Lewin is particularly interested in the debate which raised the question of the permanence or the evolution of the Soviet official system. Mr. Lewin fights the vision according to which the Party and the State remained immutable during the seven decades of the existence of the USSR. Like any State, he argued, the Soviet State was not “a State floating above all the other elements, on the history itself”. The State “depends on the historical medium in which it acts, it is the product of this medium - i.e. of a social system in constant evolution”. The evolution of the social system modified the character even political system. PCUS thus changed several times during its history. According to Lewin, the tensions, the negotiations and the task sharing between bureaucracies make Stalinism a suitable system for internal evolution, unlike the Nazisme.

Mr. Lewin defended the existence of a “solution Boukharine” during the years 1920, which, if it had been applied, would have led to a mode much more human than that created by Stalin, like on economic results much more satisfactory. Mr. Lewin was interested, under the appearance of the immobility, with the transformations of the system and the company, in particular during the post-Stalinist period. They are these changes in the Soviet company of post-war periods which produced a generation of reformers like Gorbatchev.

In an ambitious test, Mr. Lewin took as a starting point the “theory of the convergence” which, in the light of Russia of Gorbatchev, seemed more convincing than ever. The USSR had become a modern industrial society which was to face many common requirements with the capitalist democracies. It is contradiction between the modernization of the company and the persistence of the dictatorship of the Party which increased the pressures for reforms. Gorbatchev was thus not a isolated reformer made the capacity by chance, but to the energetic defender of changes to which he wanted to give an institutional dimension.

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