Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.   

“THE STORY OF RUSSIA” by Orlando Figes (Bloomsbury / distributed in NZ by Allen and Unwin, $NZ32:99) ; “FUTURE STORIES” by David Christian (Penguin-Random House, $NZ40)

 

            Some years back, while tutoring university students in Russian history, I read Orlando Figes’ A People’s Tragedy,  all 800-plus enthralling pages of it. I came to the conclusion that it was the best single-volume on the Russian Revolution that has yet appeared. I recommended it enthusiastically to my students. Since then, Figes has produced a number of other books on aspects of Russian culture and history, but with his The Story of Russia he takes a different tack. Now he dares to unravel what might be called the Russians’ “myth” about themselves. The “story” of the title has a double meaning. In one sense, a story is simply a tale – an account of events; and Figes does chronicle the history of Russia over the last thousand-odd years. But in another sense a story is something made up, and such made-up stories can shape the way a nation sees itself. In Russia’s case there are a number of such dominant myths, which Figes examines in detail.

 

            First there is the myth that Russia has always been Europe’s defender against “oriental barbarians”, with its claims to have defeated (in the 14^th century) the Tatars (Mongols). But as Figes points out (Chapter 2) the Tatars occupied much of what is now south-western Russia for about 200 years before they were beaten back, and in those 200 years the Russians not only often intermarried with Tatars, but also adopted from Tatars a legacy of autocracy, serfdom and despotic power. In other words, Russian public norms were in large part shaped by the Tatars. Related to the idea of protecting Western Europe is the Russian conviction that they alone liberated Europe from tyrants. Did not Russia definitively defeat Napoleon? Did not Russia definitively defeat Hitler? (Approved Russian history books now gloss over Russia’s lamentable record in the First World War and the two years, 1939-41, of full collaboration with the Nazis.)

            Then there is the myth that, by some mystic and holy process, Russia is the “protector” of all Slavic peoples, Russian or otherwise. This means a long history of assuming that Belarus (“White Russia”) and Ukraine (“Little Russia”) and various Balkan states should always be controlled by, in the “sphere of influence” of, or directly ruled by, Russia, regardless of these countries’ diverse cultures and languages. Ukraine, for example, was cut off from Rus for a couple of centuries by the Tatar incursion and did not consider itself a part of Russia until Russia used force of arms to annex it. What other Slavic nations think about this is of little concern to Russian leaders.

            There is the problem of the power of the state being entwined with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox myth says it is the purest and most authentic form of Christianity. The myth says that Rome once was the centre of Christianity, then Byzantium (Constantinople) took its place as the Second Rome and finally Russia’s capital became the Third Rome, after which there would be no other because in Russia was the most authentic Christianity. But in coronation ceremonies, the Orthodox Church anointed the Tsar as the true voice of God, and therefore the leader who had always to be obeyed. Church and state were one. Of course in Western Europe in Catholic and (later) Protestant lands, monarchs were also anointed by the church and in some cases there were “absolute” monarchs; but it was always clear that there was a distance between state (the “secular arm”) and the church. In the West, monarchs might be anointed in the name of God, but they were not the voice of God.

            What was the result of this in Russia? For centuries, serfdom existed under a monarch who was literally the voice of God. Therefore peasants learnt to be subservient to an unchallengeable ruler. There was an interesting sidelight to this. There were often peasant uprisings against harsh conditions, but in such uprisings the peasant leaders would always claim that they were rebelling in the name of the “real” tsar (a pretender), and therefore the ruling tsar must be a usurper and an anti-tsar. As Orlando Figes puts it “The only way Russians could legitimise rebellion was in the name of the true tsar. No other concept of the state – neither the idea of the public good nor the commonwealth – carried any force in the peasant mind. This was the outcome of a patrimonial autocracy in which the state was embodied in the person of the tsar.” (p.81)

            And, developed from the myth of the unchallengeable ruler and the culture of mass subservience in “Holy Russia”, there is the myth of the great leader who is always right and will always save the nation. Having such a leader is better than having such a quarrelsome and fractious thing as democracy. Thus the glowing accounts now given in Russian textbooks to Ivan IV (“the Terrible”), Peter the Great (the moderniser) and Alexander I (who fought Napoleon)… and increasingly to Stalin. As it is now taught in Russian schools, instability after 1917 was only fully corrected by the rule of Stalin and, by implication, instability after the end of the Soviet Union was only corrected with the advent of Vladimir Putin.

            Here, then, is Figes’ thesis about the Russian myth – Russians believe Russia is the historical defender of the West, the protector of all Slavic peoples, the nurturer of the purest form of Christianity, and the country that prospers only when it has a firm and decisive autocratic leader. Forget about the quarrels in Russia between  Slavophiles and Westernisers in the nineteenth century; forget about Marxism and Liberalism. Nationalism is the core of Russian belief and the authoritarian leader is always right, regardless of how many corpses he creates. I must add that Russians are convinced they peacefully “civilised” all the Asiatic peoples whom they colonised as their empire spread east through and beyond Siberia. In fact, such expansion was a brutal and often genocidal process – but of course the same could be said of the European colonisers of North and South America.

            So how relevant is all this to the present day? Very, argues Figes. When discussing the medieval boyars who were reined in by various tsars, Figes remarks that tsars created “a system of dependency upon the ruler that has lasted to this day. Putin’s oligarchs are totally dependent on his will.” (p.54) Be aware that Figes, well immersed in Russian culture, writes respectfully and with admiration of Russian artists, poets, novelists, scientists, engineers and ever soldiers; and he is clear in saying that, with huge sacrifice and immense loss of life, it really was Russia that had the greatest part in defeating Hitler. Russians are right to be offended by American war movies that completely ignore Russia’s role.  Be aware, too, that as well as arguing a case, Figes gives a very detailed history. We go through fine details on primitive, early Rus; the rise of tsars; the house of Romanov; the split between the revised Russian Orthodox Church and the “Old Believers”; the Napoleonic Wars; the Decembrists; Populist and Nihilist groups in the 19^th century; the impact of industrialisation; the revolution of 1905; the first Dumas; the Stolypin reforms; the impact of the First World War; the two revolutions of 1917; the civil war; Lenin and his failures; famines; Stalin and his genocide; and the grey men who followed him. Figes is particularly good in charting what happened to the hoped-for democracy after the Soviet Union collapsed and the mistakes made by Yeltsin. The result was Putin.

In Figes’ long last chapter, we see Putin as a Nationalist first and foremost (forget his Communist and KGB past); promoting all the myths about Russia that Figes has examined; authoritarian; suppressing dissenters, opposition parties and a free press; strictly controlling the dominant media; having textbooks re-written to present all of Russian history in positive terms only; creating a virtual Praetorian Guard in the form of oligarchs (many of them former Communist apparatchiks who made themselves unbelievably rich by buying up essential resources when the USSR was collapsing); and clearly planning to reclaim much of what used to be the Russian Empire. And fully supporting this agenda are the patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, who endorse Putin just as they once endorsed the tsars. Truly Putin is the product of a long, long history. But – a big caution here - when Figes finishes with Putin’s current invasion of Ukraine, he rightly condemns Putin’s actions, but he also shows how complex the underlying factors are and what blunders NATO has made in its diplomacy.  

With a good non-fiction work like The Story of Russia, I am often tempted to quote at length the wise things the author has said. But this time I’ll skip that process and rush to a verdict. If A People’s Tragedy is the one essential book you need to understand the Russian Revolution, then The Story of Russia is the one essential book you need to understand the Russian mentality and how it was formed.

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When I requested from its publisher a review copy of David Christian’s  Future Stories, I knew nothing about the author. I foolishly assumed that Future Stories would be one of those popular books that confidently tells us how human affairs will work out in the next two or three centuries. We’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust. Or we’ll be exterminated by severe climate change. Or advanced technology will overtake the human race and we’ll become the slaves of robots. Or we’ll find ways of colonising other planets when earthly resources have been used up. Or, when land and sea have been worked out, we’ll find artificial ways of producing nutritious substitutes for traditional foods. Or new sources of energy will be developed, cleaner and more efficient that fossil fuels, nuclear plants, solar or wind power. Etc. Etc. Etc. – all the familiar dystopian or utopian scenarios that have so often been presented to us. 

 

But Future Stories simply is not that sort of book. David Christian is not a pessimistic or idealistic young man. Now in his mid-seventies (he was born in 1946) this Anglo-American, Oxford-trained writer was first an historian, specialising in Russian history. But mid-career he switched to what he coined “Big History”, that is, attempting to explain to the general public the whole course of cosmic, terrestrial and human history – from the Big Bang on. Before he wrote Future Stories, he had already written three books of “Big History”, the best-known being Origin Story.

So what is Future Stories?

It is a book divided into four parts.

First comes his consideration of how philosophers and others deal (or have dealt) with the phenomenon of time itself and how it is related to the future. So he goes systematically through “A-Series” time, which sees time as a flowing river moving forward to a destination; and the concept of “B-Series Time” which sees all time as one co-existent block. What was still exists and what will be already exists. Here, then, we have the “arrow of time” concept [time moving in one direction] pitted against determinism [the atheist version of the religious idea of predestination] which says certain things are inevitable and already there in the future waiting for us to acknowledge them. But there is the matter of causation. David Christian asserts that modern science largely refutes total determinism because, although time seems directional, it still allows consequences to follow willed (human) actions. So in some limited sense, humanity shapes the future even if humanity does not shape the cosmos. “Perspective-ism” says that time and our experience of it always depends on our “frame of reference”. This is related to Einstein’s theory that the speed of light is constant, but our perception of it isn’t. Whether or not the universe has a purpose, says David Christian, all living creatures act as if they have a purpose, even if that purpose is simple survival. And part of survival is attempting to anticipate the future. But how can we anticipate the future? Christian gives four general principles, the first two of which are: “We have no evidence from the future, so we cannot expect detailed knowledge of possible futures except in rare instances such as the prediction of eclipses.” And “It is the paradoxical idea that the only evidence about likely futures lies in the past. ”(p.51) In other words, we have to look at trends in the past (Christian often refers to “trend-hunting”) and we then have to categorise ideas of the future in terms of what is probable or possible or unlikely or preposterous.

So much for general theory.

In the second part Christian then surprises us by looking at how bacteria, plants and animals deal with the future. He sees a single-cell bacterium as “predicting” the future by adjusting and changing itself by “reading” its environment. Ditto larger plants. In dealing with plants, he indulges in much anthropomorphism making such statements as “To survive and reproduce, plants have to seek out information and make probabilistic bets, like all living organisms.” (p.92) Can one really use such terms or should we credit plants with instinctive impulse rather than rational betting? True, Christian does note (p.97) that Charles Darwin was so impressed by the predictive intelligence of plants that he wondered if they had a sort of brain. Christian refutes this idea, but his anthropomorphic language continues. Turning to lower animals (worms, insects etc.) Christian says they have nervous systems, but not brains. However, like bacteria, their behaviour suggests adjustment to future likelihood. When he gets to more advanced animals, his language becomes vivid, almost lyrical, as he considers the brains of larger animals. Take this example: “Big brains are very good at detailed modelling of present realities and possible futures. The squishy ball of neurons between the ears of a thirsty young antelope can turn the millions of signals generated as it walks towards a water hole into a moving, three-dimensional virtual image, complete with swaying, sweet-smelling grasses, buzzing insects, lots of other antelopes, and, yes, the scent and sight of a pride of lions patrolling the water hole. Damn! Not all these computations go on in the brain, of course. Many occur in networks of neurons that extend down the spine and throughout the body, which is why the antelope’s legs are getting ready to run.” (p.103) Neurons give animals the ability to anticipate. As with human beings, there are both short-term and long-term types of memory to draw upon when animals attempt to plot the future. However, it is true that each time we recall past events, we modify what we “remember”. Christian spends some time considering when animal “future thinking” became full consciousness.

And so Christian, in the book’s third part, at last comes to consider how human beings have attempted, or are attempting, to prepare for the future. He notes that human beings have an exceptional number of neurons in their frontal cortex, the region of the brain that specialises in computation and planning. There was an explosion of thought in the initial development of language. This meant a greater awareness of past, present and future; but in many ancient cultures, and especially in the hunter-gatherer phase of human existence, there was a tendency to see the past in terms of a mythical time which set out moral imperatives – something like the Aboriginal “dreamtime”. The past was more important than the future inasmuch as it set up “eternal” codes of behaviour. Comes the agrarian ages, when human beings had learnt to farm, raise crops and breed animals, and the future became more important. Divination began with seers, prophets, tohunga and shamans. Important questions were asked, such as: Will the weather be good for growing crops? Will there be a drought? Will our land be flooded in a deluge? How likely is it that another people will take over our land? And later, when trade between peoples became more established, there were questions such as: Will I get a fair price for my goods? Will my journey be prosperous? Will I return home safely? Of divination in the agrarian ages, Christian says: “In its time and place, popular future thinking offered powerful and credible forms of consolation and some hope of empowerment to the vulnerable, and it still does today for many [who live in a state of anxiety]” (p.174)…” He notes that many cultures, especially the Chinese, relied on astronomy and astrology for divination. And he also notes the tricks of the trade practised by seers. As for “modern” future thinking, Christian notes that everything changed with the rise of science. Now future thinking involved consideration of causation, data collection and some form of computing. In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, future thinking was based on averages and statistics, often assuming mathematical projects without considering human contingencies, such as in the rational writing of Condorcet. From the 19^th to the 21^st century, and especially with the advent of modern computers, there has been a huge collection of data for attempts to predict the future. It is noted, however, that weather forecasts are always more reliable than economic forecasting because economics involves the human element. The least likely of predictions have to do with human behaviour. Christian imagines Cicero (who wrote about predictions) transported to the present age and says “he would be impressed by the remarkable successes of future thinking in such fields as medicine and science. But he would also note (perhaps with some glee) that the track record of future thinking in politics is dismal, hardly any better than that of Roman diviners and augurs.” (p.211)

So at last, in the fourth and last part of his treatise, Christian deals with modern prediction, “human, astronomical and cosmological”. For the “near future” in human affairs (that is, the next hundred years) he sees a continuation of globalisation, perhaps (only perhaps) leading to a greater global consensus. He is tentative about this, however, because of that human factor. He quips: “Where people are involved, there are many known unknowns. Sir Isaac Newton, who lost money he had invested during the South Sea Bubble in 1720, ruefully comments, ‘I can calculate the movement of stars, but not the madness of men.’ ” (p.232). Even within the last half-century, assumptions about the future have changed radically. After the Second World War, economic growth was seen as the way to a prosperous and happy future. But from the early 1960s on, there was the realization that there were limits to growth, limited natural resources and a growing population. However, some people concerned with population were completely wrong in their predictions. “[In 1968] two modern Malthusians, Paul and Ann Ehrlich, published a bestseller called The Population Bomb, warning of the immanent global collapse due to overpopulation. Their bad timing should remind all would-be futurists how easy it is to get things spectacularly wrong! Today, most demographers expect human populations to peak later this century, at a number between nine and twelve billion, before starting a long slow decline…” (p.238) What with advances in scientific and medical knowledge, globally more people have been lifted out of poverty than ever, population growth has slowed and age expectancy has been raised. Yet there are still anxious scenarios of the future concerned with anthropogenic climate change, wars, nuclear and other massively-destructive weapons and inequitable distribution of sources. Thus for the near future.

For what Christian calls the “middle future”, he says that in thousands or millions of years, species will evolve, perhaps including human beings. There might be “transhumanism” in the modification of human beings – and perhaps “artificial human beings” (the super-robot scenario). He speaks of nanotechnology (huge power and knowledge in tiny frames), and the greater harvesting of the sun’s energy. These things are at least plausible. Will we terraform other planets? Possibly. But equally plausible is a total collapse of the human species and of other species as we know them.

As for what he calls “remote futures – the rest of time” he remarks “… sometimes you get the spooky feeling that we can see the shape of the remote future more clearly than that of the next few centuries or millennia.” (p.285). With a degree of certainty, he considers the movement of tectonic plates and therefore the realignment of the continents and probably the emergence of totally different continents; the likelihood that in billions of years, the sun will boil away the Earth’s oceans as it turns into a red giant; and, inevitably, the collapse of the universe as we know it. In his very last pages he mentions the modish idea of a “multiverse” – that is, that there are many universes separate from the whole universe as we know it. But he sensibly states that as yet there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support the “multiverse” theory.

Will Future Stories disappoint you? Only if you were expecting something glib or sensational. Christian has avoided wild predictions, expressed caution about even plausible futures and at the same time given us a whole history of prediction and attitudes to time. His tone is very measured and it is wise to accept the paradox that it is more credible to predict the far future of cosmic events than to predict the near future of human affairs.

Christian opens his Introduction with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Banquo says to the witches “If you can look into the seeds of time, / And say which grain will grow and which will not, / Speak then to me…” To which I am inclined to quote the song in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “What’s to come is yet unsure.”