The author, Andrei Gennadievich Danilov, holds a doctorate in history. He lives in the south of Russia, in Rostov-on-Don, where he works as a professor of history at the North-Caucasus Academy of Public Administration. He has recently published a new book titled Russia: At the Crossroads of History, 1300-1900.
He was interviewed recently for SlavStuff by Mariana Markova, Ph.D. Anyone who would like to purchase a copy from the author may write to slavstuff [at] gmail [dot] com.
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Question: So what is your new book about?
My book focuses on nine turning points, or historical alternatives, that Russia faced between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. I analyze them in depth, looking at what opportunities existed at the time, what historical figures and groups supported these opportunities, what models of governance prevailed at those particular times, what mechanisms facilitated the ultimate victory, and who were the historical actors whose contributions have been unjustly forgotten.
Q: Could you say a few words about your academic interests and how this book reflects them?
My academic focus is the history of power relations in Russian during the tenth to twentieth centuries, and I also study the role of the regional intelligentsia in southern Russia. The main problem that I have tried to tackle in this book is the mythological approach, which is widespread in Soviet and even pre-Soviet history.
In other words, history is always written by the winners. Winners traditionally present themselves as the ones who did the “right thing”, while their opponents appear as either essentially having been “wrong” or acting against the interests of the majority. In such a skewed picture, Moscow is always more progressive than Novgorod, or Stalin, Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible are more progressive than their victims.
So history written by the winners is always skewed and does not provide a true picture of the past. Most students and ordinary Russians who learned this version of history do not know the possible alternatives it contains.
Q: Are you inviting them to rethink Russian history with you?
Yes, because throughout its long history, Russia has more than once found itself at a crossroads where several alternatives were possible. But most people only know how the story ended.
Q: You cover the period from the 1300 to 1900. Why do you stop there?
The twentieth century is more complicated — there were several turning points. I will write my next book about it.
Q: What kind of sources did you use?
In my introduction, I point out that the book builds on the works of several generations of historians, from Kliuchevskii and Karamzin to modern authors. In general, the book summarizes previous historical research and offers a classification of alternatives consistent over several centuries.
Q: Historical alternatives, or unrealized scenarios, are the history’s “conditional mood”, falling into the “what if” genre. But is there a conditional mood in history?
Well, that’s what we hear all the time: “History has no if, and introducing it violates the scientific approach.” But there are two approaches that are usually confused – a fantasy approach and an historical alternative approach. The first one is really non-scientific: what would have happened if, for instance, Napoleon had died young? It’s a speculation, an unreal event, and no one would be able to predict how it would have changed history.
The second approach, however, is different: we look at alternatives present at a given moment in history and we see that several paths were possible, although only one of them was followed. If we ignore the alternatives, we would get a one-sided picture of the past: Russia would always follow the path of an autocratic monarchy, and the Bolsheviks would be the only possible winners in 1917.
You can take this line of thinking further: was for example the fall of the USSR predetermined? But history is not predetermined, and we know that our present is the result of one of the possible alternative variants. So we must assume that our ancestors also had them. I think this gap in students’ knowledge about historical alternatives impoverishes and oversimplifies their picture of the past.
Q: So students would benefit from reading your book. Who else?
I wrote this book for several categories of readers: secondary and post-secondary students would be the two main ones, of course. But the book is also for anyone who is interested in history but doesn’t have access to piles of professional books. I believe that professional historians can find in it a summary of alternatives present in particular historical periods. Finally, my book also has a practical use for political leaders.
Q: What in particular can the leaders learn from your book?
Everyone knows the saying that knowledge of our past helps us understand our present. I believe that people have not changed much in terms of their personal qualities over the past several centuries, nor have methods of governance changed much. Every leader must know the experience of governance, both positive and negative, in order not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
For example, all attempts to strengthen authoritarian power and increase the role of the state have repeatedly failed to achieve any sustainable results. Look at the examples of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas I and Stalin.
Let’s take another example: for centuries, Russian political leaders and elites, together with bureaucrats, developed effective ways of resisting each other’s efforts in practical ways. These ways were elaborate enough to exclude murder or coup d’etat, and they existed in the seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. Autocracy and a strong state have always had catastrophic results for the country, and this is the lesson that contemporary power can learn from history.
Q: What could foreign audiences, including Americans interested in Russian history, learn from it?
If foreigner readers understand that Russian history has had many alternatives and there have always been people struggling for freedom, they could perceive Russians differently. It has been a country where supporters of the idea of freedom have always existed, in addition to those who supported a stronger state role.
Q: In the end, what is it that you want to tell your future readers?
I am trying to answer the question: why has Russia consistently chosen non-freedom? I believe it was not the people who were making the choices. The Russian people are not slaves, as we sometimes hear. The choices were made by a system of governance that did not allow them to participate in creating their own destiny.
The author would be happy to continue the discussion and to respond to readers’ questions. Please use the comment form below.
