“Может быть, это очень нехорошо, но я как-то все больше отрываюсь от здешней жизни вместо того, чтобы пускать в нее корни. У меня такое чувство, что Америкой я насытился достаточно, и теперь мое пребывание здесь уже совсем случайно. Здесь обеспечено мое (и моих близких) материальное существование и здесь мне легче выжидать возвращения в Россию – и это все. Духовное мое возвращение на родину уже началось – вероятно, года полтора назад.”

M. Karpovich to G. Vernadsky, 1923.

“Pushkin, I think, could not be a revolutionary because of the extraordinarily strong sense of historical continuity that he had.”

M. Karpovich, from the lecture “The Decembrists and Pushkin”, 1955.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich (1888-1959), Professor of Russian History at Harvard University from 1937 to 1957, and Editor of Novyi Zhurnal, from 1946 until his death, occupied a unique place both in the development of the field of Russian studies in America and in the cultural life of Russian emigration in the United States.^[1] For those not quite familiar with Karpovich’s biography, a few facts about his life will suffice not to feel lost. A historian by training, Karpovich came to the United States as personal secretary to the Provisional Government’s newly appointed ambassador Boris Alexandrovich Bakhmeteff in the early summer of 1917.^[2] His intention to be back in Russia by December of the same year could not materialize, and he never saw Russia again. He worked at the Embassy while it continued to function, that is, until 1922. Until 1927 Karpovich lived in New York, occasionally lecturing at various American colleges, and writing. In 1927 he was invited to teach a course in Russian history at Harvard. He stayed at Harvard for the next thirty years; in keeping with the existing age limitations in American Universities in those years, he had to retire upon turning 70 – he retired in 1957.^[3] Our story of both him and his heritage begins at this point.
His heritage implies not simply and merely the memory of him in the profession, but rather his share in the process of molding the general approach to the study of Russian history, his place in the history of Russian historiography in America, and how this place is identified and presented, if presented at all.^[4] Part of his heritage, doubtless, was the transmission not just and only of knowledge, but of an attitude to its social value and political power. He was doing this in the context of the acute ideological and political crisis that affected both the Russian post-revolutionary emigration as well as the American campuses and society as a whole. The last part of this article is devoted to the description of some problems that this heritage presents among Russian historians in America.
In June 1957, at the Retirement Banquet held for Professor Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich by his former graduate students,^[5] he was presented with a hefty volume comprising scholarly articles by twenty six of them. The volume has Karpovich’s portrait, a biographical essay penned by Philip Mosely,^[6] and a dedication: “This volume is dedicated by his pupils to Michael Karpovich in token of their admiration, affection, and gratitude.” Mosely’s essay, unusually warm and heartfelt, lists all of the achievements of Karpovich’s thirty-year-long career at Harvard: his contribution to “the establishment, in 1947, of a strong Regional Program on the Soviet Union and, more indirectly, of the Russian Research Center,”^[7] his chairmanship of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures (1949-1954), which, in Mosely’s words, he transformed into “one of the outstanding departments in the world in the field of Slavic literature and linguistics – a result in large measure due to Professor Karpovich’s own wisdom, patience, and unostentatious forcefulness.” The essay allots significant space to Karpovich as teacher, as editor of Novyi Zhurnal, and, especially, to his role as “interpreter and mediator between two cultures,” as “an invaluable interpreter of Russia to Americans and of America to Russians.”^[8] It accentuates his “special quality of judgment” and “special quality of mind,” which made him sought by many individuals and organizations in need of sound advice and wise expertise. Well-known is his close cooperation with the Chekhov Publishing House (1951-1956),^[9] less known is that after Bakhmetev’s death in 1951, “more or less single-handedly, Professor Karpovich has been a devoted advocate of many Russian cultural enterprises;” he was intensely concerned by the fate of new emigrants after the war and did much trying to find remedy to aid them. One of the essay’s sections dealt with Karpovich’s writings – it stresses their rare qualities and tactfully rationalizes their modest quantity:

“Of course, to trace his fructifying influence upon the research of others it would be necessary to pass in review the publications of many of his former students, of friends, to whose work he has given generously of time and judgment, and even of relative strangers, who have never been turned away from his study door.”

Altogether, the biographical essay^[10] commemorating and summarizing Karpovich’s achievements, the banquet, and the young scholars’ tribute also signaled the end of an important epoch in the history of Russian historiography in America.
For this reason the appearance of the Festschrift was both a scholarly and institutional event. It was not widely reviewed,^[11] not that, according to one of the reviewers, it could be: “The authors of this volume almost monopolized the teaching of modern Russian history at American universities and colleges; hardly a qualified reviewer is left to do justice to their Festschrift.”^[12] It seems worth pointing out that for each reviewer this collection had a meaning of its own. Ralph Fisher’s was merely an acknowledgement of the appearance of a good scholarly volume. Von Laue’s focus was both on “this book [being] above all a tribute to Michael Karpovich” which showed “a beloved teacher of modern Russian history in the reflection of the research and thought of his students,” and the breadth of his influence in “the variety of topics in this volume” as well as on the “remarkably high” quality of this contribution. Black reflected on the state of Russian studies in America in general and expressed satisfaction with the quantity of articles dedicated to the views of those Russian intellectuals, “mostly opponents of the government,” “who have set the tone and style of Russian public life;” he also emphasized the need for serious studies of those state officials and thinkers who “played a vital role in the transformation of Russian society.” In contrast to the three previous reviewers, Robert Byrnes concentrated on the achievements in the field of Russian studies in America: “This volume is a good index of the recent growth of the American interest in Russia.” Consequently, Byrnes’s reflections were upon Karpovich as an agent of change; he admitted that for him “the most important essay in this book is that by Professor Karpovich’s most distinguished student, Philip Mosely, now Director of Studies in the Council of Foreign Relations.” The functional importance of Karpovich also came through in the review’s last sentence:

“I cannot imag[in]e a more effective bridge from the Russia of Kljuchevsky, Bogoslovskij, and Petrushevskij to the American scholar-teacher and the American community in general than Michael Karpovich.”^[13]

That is how things were on the American side of the bridge, to continue with the same metaphor. The event, however, did not go unnoticed among Russian émigrés. In August 1958 Russkaia Mysl’ carried a lengthy essay dedicated to Mikhail Mikhailovch Karpovich on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.^[14] Written by the skillful journalist and perspicacious historian Vol’sky,^[15] Karpovich’s long-time intellectual correspondent, the essay dramatically presented the inducement behind its publication.

“For thirty years M. M. Karpovich had been the Professor at Harvard University reading lectures in Russian history, literature and culture. During those years, thousands of American students attended his lectures and many of his former students … are presently engaged in teaching.”

The author recapitulated some of the high points of the celebratory procedure, the symbolic significance of which was apparently obvious for him and his audience alike: the very fact of retirement, presentation of the Festschrift, its dedication by the students, and a thorough biographical essay by Professor Mosely. The paragraph ends thus:

“By all means, the recognition of Karpovich as ambassador of Russian culture (italics in the text) by scholarly America was a commendable event. Yet, Karpovich was honored by Americans as an American professor, and for us, Russian immigrants, there was no place in this commemoration ceremony. But still, although an American citizen, M. M. Karpovich has been tightly connected with Russian emigration, and this connection is indissoluble and of a deep intimate kind.”

There is a sort of an implicit rejoinder to Mosely’s essay in this sentence, of which the “by all means” phrase serves as a signal. It is not that there is any discord with Mosely in Yur’evsky’s article. If anything, it expands the theme of Karpovich’s devotion to “the emigration cultural action” (kul’turnoi aktsii) by emphasizing his unusual place in emigration: “There are no ‘leaders’ in Russian emigration at present,” wrote Yur’evsky, “probably because there are no parties of the type there used to be before World War I.” However, he continued, there are people in its midst who are being heeded, people of whom emigration, despite its barely existing coherence, is aware, whose opinions it wants to know, even when disagreeing with it. Karpovich is of such people: what he says is heeded, and his judgment is sought. Having said this, Yur’evsky shifted his tone: with Karpovich’s pending anniversary in mind, and “EXACTLY IN CONNECTION WITH IT (emphasis added)” he decided to re-read some of his articles in Novyi Zhurnal “to say and SHOW (emphasis added) with what respect and sympathy we relate to him.” The re-reading proved to be engrossing, and the author goes through everything published in the journal by Karpovich since 1943.
In all probability, it was Mosely’s repeated emphasis on Karpovich’s role as a mediator of Russian culture that triggered the “rejoinder.” To be more exact, I believe, it was this particular sentence:

“Michael Karpovich’s outstanding contribution as an interpreter and mediator between two cultures has also been made through his own published work. Keen judgment, understanding of reality behind the words and appearances, clarity and grace, make his writings an appendage to the teacher and the man, rather than an independent monument of original investigation.”^[16]

In contradistinction to this statement, Yur’evsky made his own: if everything published by Karpovich in Novyi Zhurnal could be assembled, it would amount to a thick and extremely interesting volume that “would give Karpovich’s views on the broadest range of questions of utmost importance and value.” Yet, by no means should Yur’evsky’s article be reduced to a simple corrective act, if only because it appears to be the only piece of writing which attempts to discuss Karpovich’s historical views – not only “as a mediator and interpreter between two cultures” but as a mediator and interpreter between Russian history and its actors. He definitely wanted to show “with what respect we relate to him” and he did – by creating a kind of his own parallel Festschrift and highlighting in a systematic way Kapvovich’s views on several crucial questions in Russian historiography: three Russian revolutions, the period of “constitutional experiment” and (the most painful of questions, especially in forties and fifties) the question about the revolutionary messianism of the Soviet Union and whether or not it continued the imperialistic policies of tsarist Russia. But, above everything else, the implicit polemics with Mosely postulated the importance of emigration as a source of Karpovich’s inspiration as a historian. It was his experience as editor of an émigré journal and his own political and immigrant experience that determined his approach, interests, place, and in the long run, his influence as an American professor of Russian history.
Karpovich’s writings in Novyi Zhurnal, which would indeed amount to a rather weighty tome if collected, were mostly published under the rubric “Commentary” and were seemingly tied to some concrete event – whether cultural, political, or ideological. Journalistic in their outward impression, they occupy a middle ground between popular history and popular philosophy, and they sometimes read as treatises, as e.g., his essay about the 1905 revolution, which turns into a methodical exposition on the meaning of the concept “reaction.”^[17] The Commentaries cover a broad array of subjects, such as America’s internal politics, the international situation, mostly that aspect of it which concerned the Soviet Union and its confrontation with the West. There were articles occasioned by the anniversaries of the 1905 and February revolutions, or written а propos of this or another issue that caused debates among émigrés.^[18] Although it is true that they do not have “a didactic intonation ex cathedra,”^[19] they project an extremely persuasive sense of authority, possibly because they are informed with a sense of urgency and tend to be larger than their subject matter. To give an illustration: one of his Commentaries,^[20] entitled “А propos of American elections,”^[21] states at the outset that neither the analysis of the process of the last election campaign, nor the reasons that insured the Republican victory constitute the real subject matter of the essay. The author’s interest is to understand the emotional responses to the outcome of elections in general. Having briefly outlined the American system of changing power, the author continues:

“The questions touched upon are of interest to me not by themselves but in connection with the question that has interested me for a long time – the question about the role of “mythology” in the political life of the contemporary world.”

The real problem, in his mind, is the political myths that underlie and govern the emotional attitudes elicited by an election’s result. The first myth is the tendency to identify oneself with a political institution, the second is the miraculously surviving belief in continuous, unilinear progress in history. Political institutions such as political parties are habitually invested with ethical content: one’s own party is perceived as embodying the idea of progress, that is, the idea of good, whereas the opposite, by definition, embodies evil. Hence, the victory of the conservative Republican party is perceived as the victory of evil. “Mythology,” writes Karpovich, “begins when political concepts are turned into absolutes”, when “a party starts perceiving itself as the Providential tool of goodness and truth…” Like any kind of monism, this belief can lead to tyranny. This is the essay’s argument from its beginning: the idea of progress has been compromised in the twentieth century, by itself the new does not ensure the good. Moreover, under present circumstances the efforts of the free world are mainly focused “on the preservation of those old positive values which this tyranny threatens.”^[22]
Despite the seemingly mundane contents of this essay (American elections), its underlying concern is to accentuate and show the difference between absolute and relative values, and the relations between the state and the individual. In other words, Karpovich’s concern is to reveal the anatomy of the Soviet system:

“The original sin of totalitarianism consists exactly in the fact that it turns these absolute values [inalienable human rights, added AZ] into relative ones, simultaneously ascribing to the relative, such as the state, nation, race, class, revolution, the importance of the absolute values.”^[23]

The belief in absolute values, particularly the value of human life, constituted the fabric of Karpovich’s life and informed both his writing and teaching with a sense of urgency, mentioned above. In essence, Karpovich had two main themes which nurtured and motivated all of his writings and teaching: Russia as part of European civilization and revolution.^[24] All other themes, one way or another, were derivatives of these two. Like other members of the liberal, Western-oriented intelligentsia, Karpovich believed that, given time, Russia could have and one day would^[25] become equal to the West in all aspects. It was “obviously laggard in its development as compared with western powers” but the difference between Russia and the West was “a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.”^[26] Not only had Russia been moving away from autocracy throughout the nineteenth century, but the “constitutional experiment” of 1905-1914 demonstrated her ability for a rapid development toward becoming a state of law along European lines. This was the foundation of Karpovich’s historical views and this was where Yur’evsky began his analysis.
The period of “constitutional experiment” was among Karpovich’s central and favorite themes – because the 1905 Revolution opened for Russia the possibility of a free and peaceful, democratic development and because this period coincided with his youth, and he never missed a chance to mention the fact:

“Not only I, a provincial high school student, and not only my coevals but people of the older generation around us suddenly acquired a feeling in the fall of 1904 that some kind of shift happened in Russia’s life, that our country was facing a still unclear but definitely a bright (svetloe) future. The 1905 Revolution was being born in the atmosphere of optimism that was flowing through the entire country.”^[27]

It was natural for Yur’evsky to choose for his analysis of Karpovich’s historical views this period. First, he was in total agreement with Karpovich’s observations and was able to corroborate them with his own. Second, he considered Karpovich’s interpretation of this period to be among the most significant contributions to Russian historiography. Indeed, at variance with many who viewed the period between 1905 and 1914 as a time of reaction and stagnation, Karpovich saw it as a period of progress, of rapid and fervent change in all spheres of Russia’s life. “In his analysis of the prewar epoch,” wrote Yur’evsky,

“Karpovich made a most valuable observation about one peculiarity in the social psychology of those days, which usually gets totally distorted. It is a known fact that a process of hasty departing from radical and revolutionary parties was occurring at that time. Many looked upon this phenomenon as “degeneration”, it was cited as proof that social reaction had set in.”^[28]

According to Karpovich’s interpretation, people were simply parting with their utopian views, maximalist demands, and with their former beliefs that the passion for destruction was synonymous with creative passion. In fact, people were abandoning underground activities because there was nothing left for them to do in the underground. They were parting ways with illegal activities to take up legal and useful ones – they turned to educating themselves, were getting professional skills as engineers, agronomists, cooperators, statisticians, teachers. They were not abandoning any real productive work but, in essence, for the first time in their lives were engaging in practical activities with a full understanding of their necessity and value.
At variance with prevalent interpretations was Karpovich’s approach to the February Revolution. He rejected its inevitability:

“One cannot discuss February as if it happened in a vacuum, without taking into account either the historical legacy it inherited or the international situation in which the revolution took place. The entire approach to this question should be changed. I am not in favor of the theory of historical determinism and do not exclude a moral evaluation of historical leaders.”^[29]

He insisted that pre-revolutionary Russia, despite all its social, political, and economic problems, had a definite and ever growing chance to solve its internal problems through the process of evolutionary development. What Russia needed was time, and time was not granted to her. “I am ready to insist,” wrote Karpovich,

“that neither the military losses and defeats suffered by Russia during the war, nor the enormous economic difficulties she faced were of a fatal character. The problems created by those difficulties both at home and at the front could have been resolved had the moral and psychological atmosphere been different, and the catastrophe could have been averted.”

He added then the words which have been repeated so many times in various textbooks and articles that they have become part of historical parlance: that under unfavorable conditions the instability of Russia’s system before the war made the revolution possible, that the war transformed this possibility into probability, and that it was “the acute political crisis developed during the war that made the Revolution inevitable. The responsibility for this political crisis rested entirely upon the authorities’ near-sighted, moreover, insane policy.”^[30]
What seems to be unusual about Karpovich’s interpretation of the February revolution is his conviction that in historical perspective it should be evaluated from a moral point of view. This revolution was the last act in a long struggle for democratic freedoms, a struggle which began with the liberation of peasants, was continued by the constitutional reforms at the beginning of the century, and itself was the final and complete act of emancipation from all the inequities of the previous system. “One has to possess a great deal of prejudice,” wrote Karpovich, “and, I would say, historical near-sightedness to reject the enormous moral meaning of all of these liberation acts.”^[31] With equal firmness he intercedes for the work done during the eight-month period of the Provisional government and for that Government itself, evoking in emigres’ memories that it was that government that “was leading the country to the Constituent Assembly, to democracy (narodopravstvo), to a radical agrarian reform, and to the restructuring of Russia on a federal basis.”^[32] Behind this insistence on the historical importance of both the 1905 and February revolutions is an entrenched belief that the creative impulse brought about by them did not have to be fruitless, that the very fact of its emergence was hopeful. Yur’evsky ascribed this approach mainly to Karpovich’s historical optimism. But it is more than simply optimism. Such an attitude is usually dictated by a religious faith grounded in a deep respect for human creative response, by an “integral respect for the human worth of the individual,” what Malia termed “charity.”^[33] It is in this quality that one has to look for a correct understanding of Karpovich’s frequently repeated maxim that history does not know final victories or final defeats, and in the course of time defeat can turn into victory. Russia’s February, from this point of view, had a future. “Even the totalitarian regime has not succeeded in changing human nature, above all, it did not succeed in stamping out a human drive for freedom and justice.” The road to eventual liberation of Russia may turn out to be both long and arduous but at the end of it there will be a “historical justification of February.”^[34] At this point, Yur’evsky analysis shifts to the themes related to Karpovich’s discussion of the October coup. So shall we but with a different agenda.
The Bolshevik takeover was a shock for everyone: “our historical misfortune” and our “national catastrophe” were the terms used by Karpovich. The responses to this catastrophe varied depending on each individual’s understanding of the situation and intellectual ability to perceive the event in all its complexity. Karpovich seemed to have worked out a strategy of response rather early in his emigrant years. Already in 1921, he informed Vernadsky how he felt about any attempts of foreign intervention and that in this respect he was a follower of Miliukov. The demise of Bolshevism in Russia would happen only when the Russian people would outgrow it (kogda on budet izzhit russkim narodom).
Among the questions that the emigration had to address was its stand and relationship vis-а-vis Soviet Russia. And here again Karpovich developed his own approach. The anti-Bolshevik campaigns, in his opinion were a catastrophe:

“For three years we looked upon Russia as an object of our heroism: we were the carriers of the best national traditions, we had to save Russia, free her from the power of evil… We could no longer see Russia behind Bolshevism (very much like underground revolutionaries did not see it behind autocracy). Meanwhile, it has existed all this time.”^[35]

In 1922-1923 when these letters were written the belief that the Bolshevism would not last and the return home would become possible was widespread. Karpovich shared it.^[36] The first two points of his program for emigration are in keeping with this belief and sound somewhat naпve to today’s readers: to be aware of developments in Russia and prepare oneself to serve “that new future Russia which is being born there in ordeal and torment.” The third point actually turned out to be self-prophetic: to do everything possible to prevent Russia from “being harmed or damaged from outside.” In other words, it was the duty of emigration to defend Russia and the Russian people.^[37] And this is exactly what the post-revolutionary emigration had been doing in the first three decades of its existence – in many different ways and above all, by simply dispelling the fog of ignorance about Russia. Karpovich’s own contribution to this particular activity is difficult to overestimate simply because everything he did constituted a rather well thought out strategy to save and defend the Russia he loved. It is not possible even to list his activities in emigration; only a few of his own crusades will be mentioned here.
Teaching seems to be the most natural theme to begin with because it constituted the center of Karpovich’s life. In his obituary article on Karpovich’s death, Kerensky wrote that after World War I,

“when Russia turned into a totalitarian state and the United States became a leading democratic power, a murky spot that occupied Russia’s space in the consciousness of American public opinion had to be – for the sake of both countries’ vital interests – eliminated. This task could not be carried out by an outsider. One had to create inside the United States a cluster of people with authority who would be well-informed about Russia’s past and present. To achieve this, it was essential, above all, to teach a correct understanding of Russia to the student youth – future teachers and scholars, future diplomats and statesmen.”^[38]

Karpovich’s career as professor of Russian History was slow in taking off. He remained an associate professor until after the end of the war, teaching mostly European history and occasionally a course on Russian history. It was only after the war “With the new attention to Russian topics in the late 1940s … [that Karpovich] cut a larger profile in and beyond his own department…” and “literally reinvented the field in his Russian History seminar…”^[39] As a teacher of Russian history, M. M.^[40]

“tended to emphasize the more liberal elements in Russia’s past, as well as those things which she had in common with the West, and to minimize somewhat the more extravagant revolutionaries and reactionaries. But this was not the product of retrospective wishful thinking, as some at times thought. Rather it was an effort to restore to Russia, in the eyes of Americans, her full historical visage, and to do this against the pressure of crass oversimplification and ignorance.”^[41]

According to a common consensus, Karpovich did not create his own school, but what he did do was to give direction to the study of Russia’s history in America. By firmly placing Russia’s history in the context of European history, he conditioned his students to concentrate on the themes of reform and the progress of the “social movement.” By naming these themes for his American audience he structured their interests even when their views came to differ with his own. As Malia put it:

“What was transmitted … was an attitude toward Russian history for any period, an attitude of mixed intellectual sobriety and cultural sympathy toward a subject that could all too easily appear whether barbaric or exotic, whether as the eternal Oriental despotism believed in by much of American public opinion…, or the fount of deep spirituality offered by Nikolai Berdiaev.”^[42]

The transfer of knowledge and attitude constituted an important part of what I referred to as a crusade. Karpovich taught in the atmosphere of intensified confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union, and the latter was very much present in his lectures, whatever evidence to the contrary some insist on.^[43] Yet, this presence was not of an ideological character, which evidently made this transfer painless.
As has been noticed, Karpovich “was engagé, as all social thinkers must be.”^[44] His predilection for making history, in addition to teaching it and writing about it, is easily discernable in the way he pursued those issues that he considered of particular importance for the fulfillment of his service to Russia. The passion and consistency with which he went after what he saw as pernicious for Russia had a truly missionary character. He used his position as a historian to exert his influence whenever he could. As everyone who wrote about Karpovich attested, he rejected any belief in Russia’s exceptionalism, be it the theory of Russia as the Third Rome, or Berdiaev’s “Russian soul.” Since Russia was part of European civilization, she could not, by definition, be totally different. Hence is his tireless fight against any kind of maximalism, nationalism, eschatological theories, and, particularly, messianism. The danger of each and all of them was that developed to their logical end they inevitably led to totalitarianism, the worst danger to threaten liberal democracy. But speaking and writing against messianism became his special theme especially after the war when the excesses of Soviet foreign policy were often explained by others as rooted in Russia’s messianic heritage. In Novyi Zhurnal alone, he devoted to Russian messianism several separate articles.^[45] Even in his private correspondence he insisted on logical approach to the expression of Russia’s exceptionalism. Characteristic in this respect, for example, is his letter to Hans Kohn written a propos of Tiutchev’s famous quatrain:

“The quatrain is a favorite with Russian Slavophils, Eurasians and nationalists of various hues. I like its epigrammic quality but object to the sentiment behind it. No country in the world can be understood by reason alone^[46] or measured by a common yardstick in all its dimensions. Each has a peculiar nature of its own and in a sense, one can only “believe” in the future of every one of them. On the other hand, within the limits in which it applies to all countries Russia can and must be understood by reason and measured by a common yardstick. I cannot understand why some of my compatriots find such satisfaction in the idea that their country is outside reason and not subject to any common human norms.”^[47]

In another letter to Kohn and in connection with the latter’s article on “Russia and Germany in the Post-War World,” Karpovich’s comment amounts to a mild suggestion betraying long discussions of the subject:

“Finally, I would not stress the peculiarity of Russia’s development as you do in your concluding remarks, particularly as you yourself express a hope for the gradual establishment of the “rule of law and individual rights” in Russia, which would not make it very different from the path of Western liberalism.”^[48]

Just as Karpovich wrote of Kliuchevsky that “one could not understand his approach to Russian history unless one keeps in mind that he was a contemporary of the Emancipation, and that his formative years were those of the ‘going to the people’ movement,”^[49] one cannot understand Karpovich’s historical views and his stand, especially in the postwar period, without keeping in mind that he was a contemporary of the “constitutional experiment” period and the victim of the October calamity. As was already pointed out, he repeated over and over again, and wherever he thought necessary that Russia could have become a constitutional democracy were it not for the war and the folly of Russia’s Imperial rulers. This concern determined the choice of courses he taught, public lectures he gave, and what he wrote. It was also a part of scholarly debates dealing with the nature of Bolshevism, and with the question of continuity or lack thereof between Russia’s imperial and Soviet eras, the history of which cannot be complete without taking into account Karpovich’s contribution.^[50] To admit that Soviet expansionism was the continuation of the policy of Russian imperialism was to agree that, after all, there was something special about the country and its people. It was a question not only of personal identity but, more important, of the future of Russia and the Russian people for “in Russian intellectual history … the debate over Russia’s relation to the West is a debate, first and foremost, about Russia’s future.”^[51]
With the advance of the Cold War, the question of continuity came to the fore in scholarly, journalistic and political discussions, and assumed paramount importance in the minds of scholars and policy-makers alike. Karpovich addressed this question as early as 1946: “I refuse to join the point of view which nowadays has gained currency that the [Soviet] expansion is nothing but a mere continuation of a ‘genuine Russian imperialism’.”^[52] At the 1947 meeting of the Modern European History Section of the American Historical Association, Karpovich delivered the principal address, “The Problem of the State in Russian History,” in which he spoke about the danger, under present conditions, of exaggerating the degree to which dictatorial rule had been characteristic of past centuries of Russian history. In this address, as elsewhere, Karpovich drew examples from European history to demonstrate that imperial Russia’s history was not unique and emphasized the evolutionary character of the Russian state, which after 1905 was moving toward the legalism and constitutionalism of the West.^[53] In 1948 he repeated with an even greater urgency that the Soviet regime and the Russian people should not be equated; to do so would be a potentially dangerous error.
How critical this question became is well illustrated by a letter from Federick Barghoorn, written in 1949:

“Dear Prof. Karpovich: The questions I am about to ask are staggeringly difficult. … I should perhaps say the question: What of pre-revolutionary Russia has been, in general, retained in Soviet Russia? Is Russia today more or less “western”? What aspects of Russian History should be emphasized to help understand the USSR? … Do you think there is such a thing as the Russian “national character” and has it remained basically fixed under the Soviets or has a “Soviet character” developed? I feel that the peculiarities of Russia help more to explain why the country succumbed to Bolshevism than the nature of Bolshevism and the present Soviet system – and yet they must play a part in the latter too. Also, I have been struck by what seem to be considerable similarities in attitudes – such as toward “the West” and “Capitalism” between Soviet D. P.s – or Soviet people whom I knew in Moscow – and non-Soviet Russians. …The reason I ask all this is that so frequently one side will attribute Soviet policy to “Marxism-Leninism”, while the other (like Walter Lippmann^[54]) will argue for a Russian “Nationalist” interpretation.”^[55]

The answers to these questions formed the basis first of a series of lectures on “Russian Imperialism or Communist Aggression” read in New York City and elsewhere, and later of his article with the same title.^[56] Karpovich was guided by two different objectives. The first one was the characterization of the Soviet system as a totalitarian formation with a menacing program and practices. At the same time, as was already pointed out, he made a concerted effort not to implicate the Russian people in the character of the regime.^[57] The second objective was an attempt to convince whoever could be convinced that there was no continuity between the ideological, social and political practices of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. He needed the second to highlight the first. In his mind, the defense of Old Regime Russia was at the same time the defense of the West and its liberal values.
Over time Karpovich seems to have tried diverse approaches and arguments to achieve both objectives. He rejected continuity on the basis of his general skeptical attitude to “long-term causation” arguments: one did not need Peter the Great to understand Stalin, nor Chaadaev’s example to understand forced psychiatric treatment, and Moscow as the Third Rome idea did not engender the Third International idea. The lecture at the National War College (see the accompanying publication) provides a very good sample of arguments regularly employed by Karpovich. Several points can be singled out here. First, the importance he ascribes to the context: history never repeats itself, states Karpovich. “Some elements of political and social structure, some psychological attitudes, some cultural concepts might reappear. Sometimes they will reappear repeatedly, but each time they will appear in a different context, and this different historical context is bound to affect their very nature.” The regime of Nicholas I was despotic; the fact that the Soviet despotism regime is also despotic does not make it similar to Nicholas’s. Second, Karpovich stresses the importance of the similarity-difference argument: it is natural to look for similarity rather than for difference. But historical processes have many different trends and they should not be ignored or minimized, for this unavoidably leads to the distortion of the historical background.
Out of the barrage of questions posed by Barghoorn, Karpovich takes up two: “What of pre-revolutionary Russia has been, in general, retained in Soviet Russia?” and “What aspects of Russian History should be emphasized to help understand the USSR?” Karpovich’s answer, and, to my knowledge, he never repeated it anywhere else, is truly ingenious: “The past might determine the present not only in a positive but also in a negative way. … This way of connection between the past and the present, which is negative and not positive, I would dare to call … a negative continuity.” Further in the lecture, Karpovich slightly reformulated Barghoorn’s question: “What then has been inherited by the present regime from the Tsars in the political field? How much could they learn from the Tsars?” They could not learn much, answered Karpovich, not in such fields as authoritarian government or suppression of freedom. What the Soviet system inherited, he continued, was not the presence of parallel phenomena but the absence of “strongly entrenched and developed democratic and liberal tendencies,” and the absence of knowledge “how to defend … freedom once they had got it, from the kind of danger, which arose in the second phase of that revolution.” Thus, answering Barghoorn’s questions, Karpovich again switched tactics by explaining presence through absence and asserting that “this is about as far as we are justified in going in trying to connect Russia’s past political experience with the nature of the present regime.”
What remains is to understand what is “negative continuity” – not in the context in which Karpovich used the term but in the context of his life and experience. Various answers are possible. One is that it was an attempt to find a non-ideological, analytical term which allowed him to translate his own sense of the development of Russian history into an academic discourse.^[58] Without rejecting this explanation, I would like to offer another. Karpovich had by that time tried so many different tactics in arguing against continuity that Barghoorn’s formulation of the question (“What of pre-revolutionary Russia has been, in general, retained in Soviet Russia?”) may have triggered this rather paradoxical answer – the absence of the presence. It was not really an answer, it was rather escape from answering. By 1953, Karpovich was probably one of the few people,^[59] at least in academia, still insisting on his theory of non-continuity, especially in the area of foreign policy. The consensus, for quite some time, was that “Russian traditional nationalism has fused completely with modern communism. The cause of Russia and the cause of communism have been indistinguishably one.”^[60]