Word: tsarist
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Although the parallel between the Tsarist and 'Soviet regimes is not explicitly stated in his ambitious new book, Russia Under the Old Regime. Pipes wants this conclusion to emerge as an historical inevitability. In arid prose he tells the story of how the crown, like a spider stretching its tentacles, became the absolute source of political and economic power in Russia, making opposition from interest groups impossible for 500 years. When opposition finally did come in the late nineteenth century, the crown reacted with the slow, sharp sting of the police state. For Pipes, it seems only natural that when...
...Chernyshevsky in 1862: What Is to Be Done? Stories about New People. One of the heroes in the novel, Rakhmetov, is portrayed as the ideal radical. Rakhmetov comes from a wealthy landowning family of ancient aristocratic lineage, but in the university he undergoes a conversion to the radical anti-Tsarist cause. He gives up his future, and for the rest of his life Rakhmetov dedicates himself to the cause of equality, reading constantly, building his strength through exercise, and maintaining an ascetic lifestyle which excludes alcohol and women. His complete self-denial is, admittedly, hard to believe. Still, somehow...
...many ways, the same impulses which directed Tsarist imperialism moved the Soviets. Their ideology precluded the trade with the West which they could not have enjoyed anyway because of their isolation in the world community. Nothing, however, precluded trade with other socialist countries which might fall under the economic domination of the Soviet Union. The old Russian desire to have year-round ice-free ports persisted. In particular, the Soviets wanted access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Most significantly, the Soviet military, which grew in influence as the Soviet's defensiveness increased, wanted protection for the frontiers...
...first examples of the development of Soviet imperialism was the experience of the Soviet Moslems of central Asia. In Tsarist times, though dominated politically by the Russians, the Moslems retained a measure of tribal self-rule, cultural independence and local economic sovereignty. After the revolution, Soviet domination of the Asian areas north of Iran was tenuous, and to curry favor the Bolsheviks allowed the Moslems to continue the privileged status they had enjoyed under the Tsar...
Near the end of the war, the Soviet aim of reuniting the old Tsarist empire accomplished, Stalin looked further afield. One by one, countries in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and choice areas of Asia (including parts of Mongolia, Manchuria and Japan) fell under Soviet domination. In some of these countries, genuine socialist revolutions may have taken place, albeit with the assistance of the powerful Soviet military machine. The eventual result, however, was the establishment, by 1948, of a far-flung Soviet sphere of influence which would have dazzled the Tsars...