“Польский след” в американской советологии, или старые домашние распри в гуманитарных науках принимающей страны

Анджей Новак

4/2007

Материал публикуется на английском (на английской части сайта)

SUMMARY:

Статья Анджея Новака посвящена исследованию польского форматирующего воздействия на сообщество западных исследователей Российской империи и СССР. Внимание автора сосредоточено на биографиях и научном творчестве трех известных историков, выходцев из Польши: Леопольда Лабедза, Ричарда Пайпса и Адама Улама. Еврейское происхождение, глубокая ассимиляция в польскую нацию и культуру и сложные варианты идентификации с Польшей интерпретируются автором в связи с влиянием этих представителей польской эмиграции на формирование образа России в западной науке и общественном мнении. В связи с этим в статье исследуется связь между исторической судьбой Польши и польской культуры и профессиональным творчеством интеллектуалов польской эмиграции. Автор задается вопросом о том, можно ли вообще говорить о влиянии польского “следа”, учитывая, что в качестве видных историков периода Холодной войны герои статьи не занимались историей Польши и не участвовали в политической жизни польской диаспоры на Западе. Автор отстаивает тезис о влиянии опыта жизни в регионе на создававшуюся героями статьи историографию. Этот опыт включал в себя дилеммы интеграции и признания в польском обществе, а также непосредственное знакомство с практиками тоталитарных режимов. В статье вскрывается сходство позиции Лабедза, Пайпса и Улама с позицией “ревизионистов”, участвовавших в политической и историографической дискуссии о природе и значении советского эксперимента. Анджей Новак считает, что эта позиция не была воспроизведением польских исторических стереотипов о России, но результатом реального антропологического опыта жизни в довоенной Польше и травмы пакта Молотова-Риббентропа.

1.Stephen Kotkin. [A review of Adam Ulam’s] Understanding the Cold War // The New Republic. 2000. Nov. 6; see also Mirosław Filipowicz. Emigranci i Jankesi. O amerykańskich historykach Rosji. Lublin, 2007. Pp. 174-194 (Chapter 4.1: “Troublemakers. Kilka słów o polskim wkładzie w Russian Studies”).↩

2.Moshe Levin’s interview in: Boston Globe. 1991. May 18.↩

3.Richard Pipes. 1917 and the Revisionists // National Interest. 1993. Spring. P. 70.↩

4.Martin Malia. Russia Under Western Eyes. From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum. Cambridge, Mass., 2000. P. 413; for Pipes-Malia controversy and its biographical background – see: M. Filipowicz. Emigranci i Jankesi. Pp. 311-344.↩

5.Jan Kucharzewski. The Origins of Modern Russia. New York,1948. Pp. XI, XV. For another succinct example of a similar view by a Polish historian in the West, see: Oskar Halecki. Imperialism in Slavic and Eastern European History //American Slavic and East European History. 1952. Vol. II. Pp. 1-26.↩

6.All biographical and bibliographical data are taken from Andrzej Nowak. Leopold Łabędź // Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939. Vol. 1 (Ed. by K. Dybciak, Z. Kudelski). Lublin, 2000. Pp. 232-233.↩

7.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War: A Historian’s Personal Reflections. Charlottesville, 2000. P. 6.↩

8.Basic biographical data, and full bibliography of Ulam’s work could be found in his memoirs: Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War.↩

9.See: M. Karpovich Collection. Bakhmeteff Archive – Butler's Library (Columbia University, NY). Box 2. Correspondence (with Richard Pipes and others).↩

10.See: Richard Pipes. Vixi. Memoirs of a Non-Belonger. New Haven & London, 2003; Idem. The author about Himself // R. Pipes. Communism: The Vanished Specter. New York, 1994. Pp. 79-84; Idem. Introduction // R. Pipes. Russia Observed. Boulder, 1989. Pp. 1-5.↩

11.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. Pp. 110-111.↩

12.Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. Poland’s Fragebogen: Collective Stereotypes, Individual Recollections // M. J. Chodakiewicz, J. Radzilowski, D. Tołczyk (Eds.). Poland’s Transformation. A Work in Progress. Charlotesville, VA, 2003. Pp. 225-226. Other data presented in this paragraph are taken from Ulam Family Letters from Lwów: http://www.aulam.org/anxiuos.htm; Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 5-7; Richard Pipes. Vixi. Chapter One, as well as from my personal interviews with Łabędź (taken in London, November 1990), Ulam (Cambridge, Mass., March 1991), Pipes (Cambridge, Mass., March 1991, and Kraków, November 2004).↩

13.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 305, 308. Ulam’s elder, beloved sister, Stefania Franciszka, was led on her path to further assimilation up to a tragic end: she married a Polish boy, and joined the Polish resistance movement against German invaders. She perished (together with her husband and their baby-child) in the great Warsaw uprising in 1944 (so notoriously unknown in the West that even in Ulam’s memoirs 1st edition the year of the uprising is identified wrongly with 1943 – the year of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto). See: Ibid. P. 59.↩

14.Richard Pipes. Vixi. P. 50.↩

15.Ibid. P. 29.↩

16.Richard Pipes. Vixi. P. 20-21.↩

17.“To imperium się rozpadnie...” – z profesorem Richardem Pipesem rozmawia Andrzej Nowak // Richard Pipes. Rosja, komunizm i świat. Wybór esejów. Kraków, 2003. Pp. 212-213.↩

18.My interview with Adam Ulam. March 1991, ms.↩

19.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 14.↩

20.Richard Pipes. Vixi. P. 1.↩

21.This same impression of the official lie, unbearable in everyday life, overwhelmed Pipes during his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1957 – see: Richard Pipes. Vixi. Pp. 89-90.↩

22.“Nazywać rzeczy po imieniu” z Lepoldem Łabędziem rozmawia Paweł Chojnacki // Arka. 1991. Vol. 36. No. 6. Pp. 91-92.↩

23.Rozmowa z Leopoldem Łabędziem // Bez złudzeń. Wybór pism 1962-1988. London, 1989. P. 320.↩

24.Actually, they all started to study Russian and Soviet topics seriously only after they landed in the West (the U.S. in Ulam’s and Pipes’ cases, and the U.K. in Łabędź’s case). We have to remind that both Pipes and Ulam started their studies in Russian almost from “zero-level”, feeling just their advantage of Polish-speakers over other candidates, not so versatile in a Slavic idiom.↩

25.See: Stephen Kotkin. Understanding the Cold War.↩

26.What is “Soviet” – What is “Russian”? A Conversation between Adam B. Ulam & George Urban // Encounter. 1990. May. P. 55.↩

27.See: Adam B. Ulam. Expansion and Coexistence. P. 260; Idem. Nationalism, Panslavism, Communism // Ivo J. Lederer (Ed.). Russian Foreign Policy. Essays in Historical Perspective. New Haven, 1962. P. 41.↩

28.See: Leo Labedz. R I P. (Editorial) // National Review, April 26, 1993; Sam Tanenhaus. The Hard-liner // Boston Sunday Globe (“Ideas” Section). 2003. November 2.↩

29.See for example: Richard Pipes. 1917 and the Revisionists // The National Interest. 1993. Number 31. Spring. Pp. 68-79; Pipes’ review of the new edition of Merle Fainsod’s How Russia is Ruled – distorted completely in its political analysis by one of the most prominent “revisionists”, Jerry Hough – under the new title: How the Soviet Union is Governed, see: Commentary. 1979. Vol. 68. No. 4. Pp. 86-88. See also a critical commentary by Peter Kenez. Ex Tempore: Experts and Believers after the Collapse of Communism // Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 2003. Vol. 4. No. 2. Pp. 369-377.↩

30.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 175.↩

31.One is tempted to look for an explanation for this attitude once again in the educational basis they obtained in Polish (II Republic) gymnasia. It is metaphorically best represented in Zbigniew Herbert poem Transformations of Livy. Herbert, just two years younger to Ulam, attended the same public schools in Lwów. He reminds in his poem how his generation read the stately prose of Roman history – against the empire and with a sympathy towards conquered peoples (his colleagues from Warsaw or Lwów gymnasia of that time could have in mind either Poles of the nineteenth Century, or Jewish historical fate, or both). They read Livy with a final consolation in mind: that someday “the empire will fall”. On the other hand, however, Rudyard Kipling’s popular vision of the British “liberal empire” appealed to young Polish pupils of that time, as well (to Adam Ulam’s imagination – so interested in the British Empire history, and to Richard Pipes maybe – so fascinated later with the figure of Peter Struve, the ideologue of the Russian “liberal empire”?). With no exact personal data available in this context, we are just guessing.↩

32.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 177.↩

33.See: Andrzej Nowak. From Empire Builder to Empire Breaker, or There and Back Again: History and Memory of Poland’s Role in east European Politics //Ab Imperio. 2004. No. 1. Pp. 255-289.↩

34.Richard Pipes. US-Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente. A Tragedy of Errors. Boulder, Colo., 1981. P. 71.↩

35.“To imperium się rozpadnie...”. P. 219. It is important to note that Pipes actually did not follow Kucharzewski’s concept but in his Russia Under the Old Regime, as well as in an abridgement of its main argument in Property and Freedom, he developed his own version of a “continuity theory.” It was based on the “patrimonial state” concept, where power is not constrained by the institution of private property. A very similar concept, adapted however to the Muscovite state only, was presented for the first time not in Polish historiography, but by a Russian historian, Alexandr Pryesnakov (1870-1929). His works, however, are not mentioned by Pipes (just as Kucharzewski’s are not mentioned either). See, for example: A. Ye. Presnyakov. Kniazhoe pravo w drevnei Rusi... Lektsii po russkoi istorii. Moskva, 1993; B. S. Kaganovich. Presnyakov i Karl Wittfogel (Vokrug odnoi kontseptsii russkogo istoricheskogo protsessa) // Tret’i martovskie chtenija pamyati S. B. Okun’a v Mikhailovskom zamke. SPb., 1997. Pp. 15-24; T. N. Zhukovskaya. A. Ye. Presnyakov i marksizm: Opyt istoriograficheskoi demifologizatsyi // A. A. Fursenko (Ed.). Rossia v XIX-XX vv. Sbornik stat’ei k 70-letiju so dnia rozhdenija R. Sh. Ganelina. SPb., 1998. Pp. 28-40.↩

36.What is “Soviet” – What is “Russian”. P. 49.↩

37.Adam B. Ulam. Nationalism, Panslavism, Communism // Ivo J. Lederer (Ed.). Russian Foreign Policy. Essays in Historical Perspective. New Haven, 1962. Pp. 39-67.↩

38.Nina Tumarkin. Adam Ulam as Writer // http://www.aulam.org/apprecix.htm↩

39.Adam B. Ulam. Nationalism, Panslavism, Communism. P. 57; See also: Expansion and Coexistence. Pp. 751-752.↩

40.Kissinger was, nota bene, one of the first students of Ulam’s classes at Harvard – see: Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 74.↩

41.George F. Kennan. Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin. New York, 1960. Pp. 364-365.↩

42.See: Richard Pipes. Vixi. Pp. 103-104 (a polemic with Kennan’s “realism”); Idem. US-Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente. Pp. 51-52 (a critique of Kissinger’s “realism”); L. Łabędź. Dwie dusze George’a Kennana [a polemic with Kennan’s book The Cloud of Danger (1977)], and: Dusze George’a Kennana, raz jeszcze // L. Łabędź. Bez złudzeń. Pp. 107-134.↩

43.What is “Soviet” – What is “Russian”. P. 54.↩

44.See, for example, Richard Pipes. Misinterpreting the Cold War // Foreign Affairs. 1995. Vol. 74; Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. Pp. 196-197, 221-229; L. Łabędź (Ed.). Poland Under Jaruzelski. A Comprehensive Sourcebook on Poland During and After Martial Law. London, 1983.↩

45.See, for example, Richard Pipes. Soviet Global Strategy // Commentary. 1980. August; Adam B. Ulam. Expansion and Coexistence. Pp. 751-752; Idem. Dangerous relations. The SU in World Politics, 1970-1982. Oxford, 1983. Pp. 315-316; L. Łabedz, Walter Laqueur. A Question of Survival // Harper’s. 1975. July.↩

46.Adam B. Ulam. Understanding the Cold War. P. 177.↩

47.Richard Pipes. Domestic and Foreign Affairs // Ivo J. Lederer (Ed.). Russian Foreign Policy. Essays in Historical Perspective. New Haven, 1962. P. 169.↩

48.It is worth noting, that they also never participated in a construction of a Central (East-Central) European specific identity or myth. This construction, evident in efforts of a few Polish historians and intellectuals (from Oskar Halecki to Czesław Miłosz and Jerzy Kłoczowski), and developed in different versions by their Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian colleagues, has been based on the contrast between Russia – imperial, aggressive, non-European – and (East) Central European nations’ role as Russian (Soviet) imperialism victims. See critical accounts of this tendency: A. I. Miller (Ed.). Tsentralnaia Evropa kak istoricheskii region. Moscow, 1996 (Miller’s article “Ob istorii kontseptsii ‘Tsentralnaia Evropa’”, Pp. 4-25); Idem. Tema Tsentralnoi Evropy: istoriia, sovremennye diskursy i mesto v nikh Rossii // Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 2001. No. 54.↩

49.Richard Pipes. Vixi. P. 81.↩

Примечания