In reviewing the French edition of Utopia in Power several years ago, I emphasized how interesting it was to read a history of the USSR written by two émigré historians, Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, who had been the products of the Soviet academic establishment. How would they, with their inside knowledge and their Soviet training, see the USSR's experience once they were free of censorship problems and able to read some of the Western literature on the subject? Consequently this work is to be welcomed, whatever criticisms one is tempted to make about the authors' interpretations.
A basic question at once arises over the title, Utopia in Power. Is this not in important respects misleading, unless applied to the early period of Soviet rule? Yes, I agree with the authors that Lenin and his comrades came to power inspired by the utopian vision of Marxian socialism, and their actions, and those of their supporters, and incomprehensible unless the source of their inspiration (and genuine enthusiasm and commitment) is taken into account. But at no time does a party in power act for purely ideological reasons. Thus a sizeable literature, in and out of the Soviet Union, seeks to disentangle the elements of "war" from the element of "communism" in the period known as War Communism (1918-1921). Ideological fervor was there but so were the emergencies of war. The state acquires powers of requisitioning and control in wartime in countries of many political colorations. Similarly, while the devaluation of money, hyperinflation, was indeed greeted by many comrades as heralding the coming of a moneyless socialist dawn, hyperinflation also occurred in, for example, Germany (and by coincidence both countries succeeded in stabilizing their currencies in 1923). State purchase of grain took ugly forms of forcible requisitioning in 1918-1921, but the process had already begun in 1916, under the czars, and the failure to procure enough to feed Petrograd was one of the immediate causes of the collapse of the czarist empire.
Still, the authors are right to stress the great importance of "utopia" during and for the ten years following the revolution. Many of the executants of policy were fanatically devoted to building a new world. They were real Believers, who genuinely hated consumerism and other "bourgeois" vices, and found it very had to tolerate "NEPmen" (supporters of the New Economic Policy) and even the pettiest private enterprise during the period of the mixed economy in the 1920s. Hence, Stalin could appeal to them when he turned against the market and the private sector at the end of that decade.
But if we transfer our gaze ten years on, to the end of the 1930s, what do we see? We see what can be called the period of High Stalinism. The fanatics who believed in building a new world were shot almost to a man, as were larger majority of Lenin's immediate comrades. Even most of those who had risen to power with Stalin, and had actually carried out collectivization and sought to fulfill the hugely over ambitious First Five-Year Plan, were executed. What came to power then? Utopia?
Let me illustrate. During the first years after the revolution, the secret police (then called the Cheka) was headed by Dzerzhinsky, a totally dedicated, ruthless fanatic of impeccable honesty and personal asceticism. The cruel "sword of the revolution" was wielded by a real utopian, to whom even his enemies could not impugn base motives. By 1939, we had Beria, a corrupt and cynical flatterer who was reputed to his
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