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Robert C. Tucker

Robert Charles Tucker (May 29, 1918 – July 29, 2010) was an American political scientist and historian. Tucker is best remembered as a biographer of Joseph Stalin and as an analyst of the Soviet political system, which he saw as dynamic rather than unchanging.

Biography Edit

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was a Sovietologist at Princeton University. He graduated from Harvard College, earning an A.B. magna cum laude in 1939, followed by an A.M. in 1941. He served as an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944–1953. He received his PhD degree from Harvard University in 1958; his doctoral dissertation was later revised and published as a book. His biographies of Joseph Stalin are cited by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies as his greatest contribution.[citation needed] At Princeton he started the Russian Studies Program and held the position of Professor of Politics Emeritus and IBM Professor of International Studies Emeritus until he died.

Tucker was a scholar of Russia and politics. His viewpoints were shaped by nine years (1944–1953) of diplomatic and translation work in wartime and postwar Russia (including persistent efforts to bring his Russian wife to the United States),[1] by wide-ranging interdisciplinary interests in the social sciences and humanities (notably history, psychology, and philosophy), and by creative initiatives to benefit from and contribute to comparative political studies (especially theories of political culture and leadership).

Tucker married a Russian, Eugenia (Evgeniia) Pestretsova, who eventually emigrated with him and taught Russian for many years at Princeton. His daughter Elizabeth is a senior editor on the radio program Marketplace, American Public Media.[2] Her husband, Tucker's son-in-law Robert English, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California.

Basic ideas Edit

Tucker's Harvard University doctoral dissertation was in philosophy and challenged the dominant interpretations of Soviet and Western theorists. He linked the ideas of the young and mature Karl Marx and emphasized their "moralist," "ethical," and "religious" rather than political, economic, and social "essence". His revised dissertation was published as Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (1961) and was followed by a collection of innovative essays on Marxian theories of revolution, modernization, and distributive justice as well as comprehensive anthologies of the writings of Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.[3]

Tucker presented lucidly formulated views on tsarist and Soviet politics. He affirmed that change in Soviet political leadership was even more important than continuity in Russian political culture. He contended that psychological differences were more important than ideological similarities in Soviet leadership politics and that Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev had very different personalities and mentalities.[4] He emphasized that the different psychological make-ups of Russia's top political leaders invariably produced different perceptions of situations and options, which, in turn, periodically altered policymaking and implementation procedures as well as domestic and foreign policies. He argued that systemic changes came not only in October 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, and in December 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, but also in the mid-1930s, when Lenin's one-party dictatorship was transformed into Stalin's one-man dictatorship, and in the mid-1950s, when oligarchic one-party rule filled the power vacuum created by the dictator's death. He underscored that Soviet and post-Soviet Russia's political development progressed in distinctive stages, which were the products of leading officials' choices among viable options at key junctures. Tucker's main stages were: War Communism (1917–1921), New Economic Policy (1921–1928), Revolution from Above (1928–1937), Neo-Tsarist Autocracy (1937–1953), Thaw (1953–1964), Stagnation (1964–1985), and Perestroika (1985–1991).[5]

Stalinism Edit

While involuntarily remaining in Stalinist Russia, Tucker was greatly influenced by psychoanalytical theories of neurosis, paranoia, and self-idealization. He recognized such traits in Stalin and hypothesized that "psychological needs," "psychopathological tendencies", and "politicized psychodynamics" were not only core elements of Stalin's "ruling personality", but also of Stalinism as a "system of rule" and Stalinization as the process of establishing that rule—"Neo-Tsarist Autocracy".[6]

I hold that Stalinism must be recognized as an historically distinct and specific phenomenon which did not flow directly from Leninism, although Leninism was an important contributory factor. ... Stalinism, despite conservative, reactionary, or counter-revolutionary elements in its makeup, was a revolutionary phenomenon in essence; ... Stalinist revolution from above, whatever the contingencies involved in its inception and pattern, was an integral phase of the Russian revolutionary process as a whole; ... notable among the causal factors explaining why the Stalinist revolution occurred, or why it took the form it did, are the heritage of Bolshevik revolutionism, the heritage of old Russia, and the mind and personality of Stalin.[7]

These themes were developed from comparative, theoretical, and interdisciplinary perspectives and were documented at length in Tucker's magnum opus, the two published volumes of an unfinished three-volume biography of Stalin, and in other important works on Stalin and Stalinism.[8]

Tucker rejected the view that Stalinism was an "unavoidable," "ineluctable," or "necessary" product of Leninism. He highlighted the similarities between tsarist and Stalinist nationalism and patrimonialism, as well as the warlike brutality of the "Revolution from Above" in the 1930s. The chief causes of this revolution were Stalin's voracious appetite for personal, political, and national power and his relentless quest for personal, political, and national security. The chief consequences were the consolidation of Stalin's personal dictatorship, the creation of a military-industrial complex, and the collectivization and urbanization of the peasantry. And the chief means of achieving these ends included blood purges of party and state elites, centralized economic management and slave labor camps, and genocidal famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.[9]

Stalin's irrational premonitions, trepidations, and aggressions—intermixed with his rational perceptions, predispositions, and calculations—decisively influenced Soviet domestic politics and foreign policies during and after World War II. Of particular significance were Stalin's forced resettlement of entire non-Russian nationality groups, skillful negotiations with wartime allies, atomic espionage, reimposition of harsh controls in postwar Russia, imposition of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, and Cold War military-industrial, geopolitical, and ideological rivalry with the United States.[10]

De-Stalinization Edit

When Stalin died in 1953, Tucker experienced "intense elation" for personal and political reasons.[11] His wife, Evgenia Pestretsova, was soon granted a visa to the United States (and his mother-in-law joined them a half-decade later after a face-to-face request to Khrushchev). Tucker saw a gradually, albeit fitfully, liberalizing Soviet polity, economy, and society and an improving Soviet-American relations (with prospects for much less conflict and much more cooperation).[citation needed]

For Tucker, Stalin's demise posed the question "What shall take the place of Stalinism as a mode of rule and pattern of policy and ideas"? The central issues in Soviet politics were the "desirability, forms, limits, and tempo" of de-Stalinization.[12]

As Tucker detailed in The Soviet Political Mind (1963 and 1971, rev. ed.) and Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia (1987), Stalin's successors did not consensually craft a post-Stalinist political system. An oligarchic system emerged as the byproduct of struggle over power and policy among reformist and conservative party and state leaders, whose factions and coalitions increasingly sought the support of subnational party and state officials. Forswearing the use of violence to resolve intraparty disputes and outmaneuvering rivals in bureaucratic infighting, Khrushchev revitalized the party and reasserted its leading role vis-à-vis the state bureaucracies. But his international and domestic "hare-brained schemes"—above all, the Cuban Missile Crisis—led to his ouster by Brezhnev's "collective leadership", whose costly and prolonged military buildup helped to produce (in Tucker's apt words) "a swollen state" and "a spent society".[13]

Gorbachev made glasnost, perestroika, and democratization the centerpieces of a revolutionary ideology, which sparked a divisive public debate about the political content and policy implications of these concepts. More revolutionary, in the late 1980s, Gorbachev discarded the "Brezhnev doctrine", withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan and allowing East European countries in the Soviet bloc to choose their own types of political system. And, most revolutionary, from late 1990 to late 1991, Gorbachev unintentionally and Boris Yeltsin intentionally spurred the disintegration of the Soviet Union, enabling the fifteen union republics to develop their own types of nation-state. Gorbachev at the time was the indirectly elected president of the Soviet Union, and Yeltsin was the directly elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,[14] by far the largest and most important union republic. The rivalry between Gorbachev and Yeltsin unequivocally confirmed Tucker's contention that the personalities and mentalities of top Soviet leaders could clash viscerally and vindictively. Tucker had long insisted that intraparty conflict was a catalyst of change in both Soviet policymaking procedures and substantive policies. He observed in 1957: "Probably the most important single failing of Soviet studies in the West has been a general tendency to take pretty much at face value the Communist pretension to a 'monolithic' system of politics. ... Not monolithic unity but the fiction of it prevails in Soviet politics. The ruling party has rarely if ever been the disciplined phalanx pictured by its image-makers, and Lenin's well-known Resolution on Party Unity of 1921 has largely been honored in the breach".[15]

Tucker was keenly aware that Soviet ideology could divide or unify leading party officials and could weaken or strengthen party discipline.[16]

During the Gorbachev years, a reformist official ideology clashed with a conservative operational ideology, and this conflict fractured the party. In 1987, Tucker affirmed: '"Marxism-Leninism' is not at present a rigidly defined set of dogma that allows no scope for differences of interpretation on matters of importance, as it was earlier on. Gorbachev is propounding his own version of it while recognizing—and deploring—that far from all his party comrades share it".[17] Indeed, freer expression of aspirations and grievances destabilized as well as de-Stalinized state-society relations and disintegrated as well as democratized the Soviet polity and society.[original research?]

"Dual Russia" Edit

Tucker coined the concept of "dual Russia". This concept focuses attention on the psychological rift between the Russian state and society and on the "we-they" mentality of Russia's coercive elites and coerced masses.[18] "The relation between the state and the society is seen as one between conqueror and conquered". Tucker stressed that this "evaluative attitude" was embraced and reinforced by the most violent and impatient state-building and social-engineering tsars, especially Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Tucker also stressed that Alexander II tried to narrow the gulf between the "two Russias", but his "liberalizing reform from above coincided with the rise of an organized revolutionary movement from below".[19] Indeed, expectations and assessments of "dual Russia" seem to have greatly influenced the decisions and actions of tsars and commissars, revolutionaries and bureaucrats, and ordinary citizens of Russian and non-Russian ethnicity.

Tucker underscored that most tsars and tsarist officials viewed state-society relations as hostile, and that most of the huge serf peasantry, small urban proletariat, and tiny educated stratum had similarly hostile views. But Tucker did not observe a stable or complementary relationship between authoritarian Russian elites and obeisant Russian masses. Instead, he saw mounting pressures from social units and networks for an "unbinding" of the state's control of society. Tucker's illiterate serf and literate proletarian view the tsarist state as "an abstract entity" and "an alien power".[20] His collective farmer resents enserfment and his factory worker resents exploitation in Stalin's "socialist" revolution. And his post-Stalin democratic dissident and liberal intellectual actively and passively reject "dual Russia".

Tucker used the concept of "dual Russia" to elucidate a very important component of de-Stalinization:

The [Khrushchev] regime, it would appear, looks to a rise in the material standard of consumption as a means of reconciling the Russian people to unfreedom in perpetuity. But it is doubtful that a policy of reform operating within these narrow limits can repair the rupture between the state and society that is reflected in the revival of the image of a dual Russia. A moral renovation of the national life, a fundamental reordering of relations, a process of genuine "unbinding," or, in other words, an alternation in the nature of the system, would be needed.[21]

In short, Tucker viewed "dual Russia" as a core element of the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet political systems, and he affirmed that systemic change must be founded on spiritual healing of state-society relations.

Political culture Edit

Tucker distinguished between "real" and "ideal" culture and between "macro-level" and "micro-level" culture. "Real" cultural patterns consist of "prevalent practices in a society"; "ideal" patterns consist of "accepted norms, values, and beliefs". A "macro-level" culture is a society's "complex totality of patterns and sub-patterns" of traditions and orientations; "micro-level" cultural elements are "individual patterns and clusters of them". Cultural patterns are "ingrained by custom in the conduct and thoughtways of large numbers of people". More like an anthropologist than a political scientist, Tucker included behavior as well as values, attitudes, and beliefs in his concept of culture.[22]

Tucker affirmed that "a strength of the concept of political culture as an analytic tool (in comparison with such macro concepts as modernization and development) is its micro/macro [and real/ideal] character". He studied these four characteristics individually and in various juxtapositions, configurations, and interactions. And he hypothesized that different components of political culture "can have differing fates in times of radical change", especially in revolutionary transitions from one type of political system to another and from one stage of political development to another.[23]

Tucker corroborated this hypothesis with evidence from the Soviet Union. In 1987, he affirmed: "The pattern of thinking one thing in private and being conformist in public will not vanish or radically change simply because glasnost has come into currency as a watchword of policy. Changing the pattern will take time and effort and, above all, some risk-taking openness in action by citizens who speak up ... [and] forsake the pattern of pretence which for so long has governed public life in their country."[24] In 1993, he elaborated: "Although communism as a belief system ... is dying out [in post-Soviet Russia], very many of the real culture patterns of the Soviet period, including that very "'bureaucratism' that made a comeback after the revolutionary break in 1917, are still tenaciously holding on."[25] And, in 1995, he added: "The banning of the CPSU, the elimination of communism as a state creed, and the breakup of the USSR as an imperial formation marked in a deep sense the ending of the Soviet era. But in part because of the abruptness with which these events came about, much of the statist Soviet system and political culture survived into the 1990s."[26]

As Tucker saw it, the "ideal" and "macro" political cultures of the Communist party collapsed with the Soviet Union, but the "real" and "micro" political cultures of tsarist and Soviet Russia adapted to the emerging governmental, commercial, legal, and moral cultures of post-Soviet Russia. He underscored the impact of tsarist political culture on Soviet political culture and, in turn, their combined impact on post-Soviet political culture. Tucker was not a historical determinist, but he observed that centuries-old statism was alive and well in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Authoritarian political systems Edit

Tucker coined the concept of "the revolutionary mass-movement regime under single-party auspices," which he viewed as a general type of authoritarian regime with communist, fascist, and nationalist variants. Tucker's purpose was to stimulate both cross-national and cross-temporal comparisons of authoritarian political systems and social movements. He hypothesized that Soviet Russian history is "one of different movements and of different Soviet regimes within a framework of continuity of organizational forms and official nomenclature".[27]

Tucker put emphasis on the top Soviet leader's mental health and its ramifications for political change and continuity. The psychological or psychopathological needs and wants of a movement-regime's leader are "the driving force of the political mechanism," and the movement-regime is "a highly complicated instrumentality" for expressing the leader's primal emotions in political behavior. Stalin's self-glorification, lust for power, megalomania, paranoia, and cruelty are viewed as integral components of Stalinist "real culture," operative ideology, "dictatorial decision making", domestic and foreign policies, policy implementation and resistance, and state penetration and domination of society. Tucker sought not only to describe and document Stalin's motives and beliefs, but also to explain their psychological origins, interactive development, and tangible consequences for Stalin individually and for Stalinist rule.

Tucker's focus on the diverse mind-sets and skill-sets of Soviet leaders supported his early critique of the totalitarian model, which he faulted for paying insufficient attention to the institutionalized pathologies and idiosyncrasies of autocrats and oligarchs. Tucker also criticized the totalitarian model for downplaying the conflicts and cleavages, inefficiencies and incompatibilities, and "departmentalism" and "localism" in purportedly "monolithic" and "monopolistic" regimes. He noted that an autocrat's top lieutenants often were bitter rivals, rank-and-file party officials often withheld negative information from their superiors, and "family groups" or "clans" often resisted state controls in informal and ingenious ways.

Having lived and worked in Stalin's Russia for nine years, Tucker had rich experiential knowledge and instinctive comprehension of everyday life in the USSR, which included family, friends, favors, work, and bureaucracy as well as fear, deprivation, persecution, surveillance, and hypocrisy. He could feel as well as analyze the similarities and differences between the realities and ideals of Soviet totalitarianism. And, because the totalitarian model was the dominant cross-national component of Sovietology, Tucker called for more and better comparative analysis of Soviet politics and for mutually beneficial ties with mainstream political science. He rejected the "theoretical isolationism" of Sovietology and its widely held presupposition that Soviet politics was "a unique subject matter".

Political leadership Edit

Tucker compared Soviet and tsarist Russian political leaders, as well as various types of political leadership in various contexts. In Politics as Leadership (1981), he argued that leadership is "the essence of politics". He analyzed the diagnostic, prescriptive, and mobilizing functions of leadership. He surveyed "the process of political leadership," "leadership through social movements," and "leadership and the human situation". He underscored that a leader's definition of a situation could be self-fulfilling and must be communicated effectively to different audiences. And he elaborated on the key sociopsychological maxim that "situations defined as real are real in their consequences":

The political process is influenced by many a material factor, but it has its prime locus in the mind. Not only is it a mental process when leaders learn about and analyze the causes of circumstances that have arisen, when they interpret the circumstances' meaning in relation to various concerns, when they define the problem situation for their political communities and decide on what seems the proper prescription for collective action. Mental processes are also pivotally involved—now in the minds of followers or potential followers—when leadership appeals for positive response to its policy prescription.[28]

Tucker contrasted constitutional and nonconstitutional states, especially their respective political cultures and leadership prerogatives:

What distinguishes constitutional forms of statehood ... is that no one, be it a ruling person, a government in power or a ruling party, may act on the principle L'Etat, c'est moi [I am the state]. For the state is the body of citizens, together with the collectively self-accepted system of laws by which they are governed and which center in the constitution. ... The result is a disjunction between loyalty to the state and agreement with the policies of a particular government in power or acceptance of that government as a desirable one for the nation. ... That, it seems, is the essence of constitutionalism as a political culture; open plurality of political groups or parties is an institutional derivative of this disjunction. Where constitutionalism does not exist, even though a constitutional charter may have been formally proclaimed, the authorities treat disagreement with the given government's or ruling party's policies, or disapproval of the government itself, as disloyalty to the state. In effect, they say: L'Etat, c'est nous [We are the state].[29]

Briefly stated, Tucker stressed the importance of political leadership. He contended that the psychological characteristics of autocrats varied greatly, as did their personal and policy priorities and their policymaking and administrative capabilities. He affirmed that oligarchs perceived opportunities and liabilities in diverse ways and often struggled over power and policy, especially at historical turning points with viable options. An avid scholar of Russian history, Tucker scrutinized the interaction between the tsarist autocracy and the revolutionary movement. He emphasized the Russian rather than the Marxian roots of Bolshevism. He highlighted the differences between Lenin's one-party dictatorship and Stalin's one-man dictatorship. He illuminated the similarities between tsarist and Stalinist state-building and social engineering. He elucidated the domestic and international politics of de-Stalinization in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. And he argued that the animosities, anxieties, and incompatibilities of the "two Russias" weakened the legitimacy, efficacy, and stability of tsarist, communist, and post-communist regimes.

Communist studies and the social sciences Edit

What younger generations of comparativists in political science may not know[according to whom?] is that Tucker was at the forefront of efforts to bring the comparative study of communist systems into the discipline of political science and the field of comparative politics. In 1969, he assumed chairmanship of the Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. During his six-year tenure as chair, the Planning Group convened a number of international conferences that shed new light on the similarities and differences among communist regimes. The proceedings of these conferences were reported to the profession through the publication of several conference volumes.[30] Tucker's tenure as chair also saw the expansion of the Planning Group's Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, which presented shorter discussion pieces on the subject of its masthead.[31]

The intellectual tone for much of the work of the Planning Group under Tucker's leadership was set by his paper "Culture, Political Culture, and Soviet Studies," written for a 1971 conference on Communist Political Culture convened at Arden House in Harriman, New York. Subsequently, published in Political Science Quarterly (1973) and as the opening chapter in his book Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia (1987), that paper set forth the hypothesis that "if Communism in practice tends to be an amalgam of an innovated cultural system [Marxism] and elements of a national cultural ethos, then divergences of national cultural ethos will be one of the factors making for developmental diversity and cultural tension between different [Marxist] movements". Subsequent conferences of the Planning Group explored the extent of those divergences and developmental diversities, including a third element in the amalgam that Tucker had overlooked—components of imported foreign culture, including technology—but to which he was quite receptive.[original research?]

Although perhaps best known for his seminal trilogy on Stalin (the third volume of which remained unfinished at the time of his death), the corpus of Tucker's scholarly work was significant, among other reasons, for moving communism studies and particularly Soviet studies away from narrow area studies and helping to place them within the parameters of political science and the social sciences. His desire to move Soviet studies in that direction can be found in one of his earliest works—on the first page of an article entitled "Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement Regimes," published in The American Political Science Review (1961). This article was reprinted in an important collection of Tucker's early essays—The Soviet Political Mind (1963; rev. ed. 1971) — that included such important essays as "The Image of Dual Russia" — a classic piece[promotion?] that is still assigned in graduate and undergraduate courses on Soviet and Russian politics.[citation needed]

Tucker's highly regarded work[promotion?] on Stalin drew on the theories of psychologist Karen Horney, providing insights into the feared (and still revered by some in Russia) Soviet leader and demonstrating the significance of psychological theories for understanding political leadership. Rather than merely describing Stalin's cruelty, paranoia, and mental quirks, Tucker was more concerned with explaining Stalin's psychological make-up. And that is where Horney's theories proved invaluable to him. He found in Horney's work the study of "neurotic character structure," which included such attributes as the "search for glory" and a "need for vindictive triumph".[32] It was Horney's 1950 book Neurosis and Human Growth that particularly inspired him while serving on the staff of the American Embassy in Moscow at the time. A half century later, he was quite candid in acknowledging the role of that work in the development of his own thinking: "Instead of dealing in such abstract categories from a book of psychology, I was now using that book as guidance in a biographer's effort to portray his subject as an individual".[33]

Notwithstanding his "intellectual fascination with [Horney's] unusual hypothesis," Tucker in the end confessed that his biography of Stalin "never became —fortunately— the political-science tract that it started out to be".[34] He was quick to add, however, that "neither did it become a conventional biography of a historically influential person". While this may indicate growing frustration at his own attempts to marry Soviet studies and the social sciences, he nevertheless remained sympathetic to and supportive of such attempts by his own students and colleagues.

Tucker's interest in political leadership was by no means confined to Stalin. Indeed, he addressed the subject of political leadership in a much broader context in his 1981 book Politics as Leadership, in which he viewed politics as leadership rather than as power. Such an approach, Tucker argued, was more useful to students of society, since it was more comprehensive and could open up more areas to political analysis than could the more orthodox view of politics as power. In his preface to the 1995 revised edition of the book, Tucker restated two fundamental propositions that had guided his inquiries into political leadership: (1) "political leadership often makes a crucial difference in the lives of states and other human communities"; and (2) "leadership—although the term itself has a positive resonance—can be a malignant force in human affairs as well as a force for good."[35] His collected works clearly demonstrated the veracity of both propositions.

Works Edit

  • Tucker, Robert C. (1961). Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-7658-0644-4.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1971) [1963]. The Soviet Political Mind: Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change (Rev. ed.). New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-00582-8.
  • Tucker, Robert C.; Cohen, Stephen F., eds. (1965). The Great Purge Trial. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. LCCN 65-14751.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1969). The Marxian Revolutionary Idea. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-00539-9.
  • Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1972). Tucker, Robert C. (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-09040-X.
  • Lenin, Vladimir (1977). Tucker, Robert C. (ed.). The Lenin Anthology. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-09236-4.
  • Tucker, Robert C., ed. (1977). Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-8133-2491-2.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1987). Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-95798-5.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1988). Stalin as Revolutionary: 1879-1929. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-00738-3.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1990). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02881-X.
  • Tucker, Robert C. (1995) [1981]. Politics as Leadership (Rev. ed.). Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-8262-1023-6.
  • Tucker, Robert C.; Colton, Timothy J., eds. (1995). Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership. Boulder CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-2492-0.

See also Edit

Notes Edit

  1. ^ Martin Douglas, "Robert C. Tucker, a Scholar of Marx, Stalin and Soviet Affairs, Dies at 92", The New York Times, August 1, 2010, p. A4.
  2. ^ "Cast and Crew". Retrieved 28 July 2011.
  3. ^ Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1961); Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York: Norton, 1969); Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1972); and Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Lenin Anthology (New York: Norton, 1975).
  4. ^ Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Soviet Political Mind (New York: Norton, rev. ed. 1971), ch. 9, 207 and 225.
  5. ^ Many outstanding articles were reprinted in Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind: Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change (New York: Norton, 1963, and rev. ed., 1971); and Robert C. Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Norton, 1987).
  6. ^ Tucker, "The Dictator and Totalitarianism," in The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed., 30-32, 42; and Stalin in Power, 1-9 ff.
  7. ^ Tucker, "Stalinism as Revolution from Above," in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), 77-108, quote at 78 (italics in original); a shorter version was reprinted in Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 72-107, quote at 73 (italics in original).
  8. ^ Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: Norton, 1973); Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941; Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen, eds., The Great Purge Trial (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965); and Tucker, ed., Stalinism.
  9. ^ Tucker, "Swollen State, Spent Society: Stalin's Legacy to Brezhnev's Russia", in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 116 ff.; and in Erik P. Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird, eds., The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine Publishing Co., 1984), 48 ff.
  10. ^ John Lewis Gaddis, "The Cold War: A New History" (London: Penguin, 2007), 8-14.
  11. ^ Robert C. Tucker, "Memoir of a Stalin Biographer", The International Karen Horney Society, 6 (last updated June 18, 2002)
  12. ^ Tucker, "The Politics of Soviet De-Stalinization," in The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed., 199.
  13. ^ Tucker, Robert C., "Swollen State, Spent Society," in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 108-139; and in Hoffmann and Laird, eds., The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era, 41-67.
  14. ^ Charles E. Ziegler, "The History of Russia", 146
  15. ^ Tucker, "The Politics of Soviet De-Stalinization," in The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed., 197 (italics in original).
  16. ^ Robert V. Daniels, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 390-99.
  17. ^ Tucker, "Conclusion" (205) and "To Change a Political Culture: Gorbachev and the Fight for Soviet Reform" (140-98) in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia.
  18. ^ Tucker, "The Image of Dual Russia," in The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed., 122 (italics in original).
  19. ^ Tucker, "The Image of Dual Russia," pg. 125.
  20. ^ Tucker, "The Image of Dual Russia," pp. 122-125. (italics added).
  21. ^ Tucker, "The Image of Dual Russia," pg. 141. (italics added).
  22. ^ Robert C. Tucker, "Sovietology and Russian History," Post-Soviet Affairs, 8, 3 (July–September 1992), 190-191 (italics added).
  23. ^ Tucker, "Sovietology and Russian History," pg. 191.
  24. ^ Tucker, "Sovietology and Russian History," pp. 190-193; and Tucker, "Gorbachev and the Fight for Soviet Reform", in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 184-185 (italics in original).
  25. ^ Robert C. Tucker, "Foreword," in Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., and Erik P. Hoffmann, eds., Post-Communist Studies and Political Science: Methodology and Empirical Theory in Sovietology (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), xi-xii.
  26. ^ Robert C. Tucker, "Post-Soviet Leadership and Change", in Timothy J. Colton and Robert C. Tucker, eds., Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 9, 26.
  27. ^ Tucker, "On Revolutionary Mass-Movement Regimes", in The Soviet Political Mind, rev. ed., 7, 16, 18 (italics in original). On Stalin's personality, see also chapters 2-5.
  28. ^ Robert C. Tucker, Politics as Leadership (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1981, rev. ed., 1995), 17-19, 59, 113-114, quotes at 17 and 59 of rev. ed. On the linkages between political leadership and political culture, see also Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia; and Tucker's two chapters in Colton and Tucker, eds., Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership, 5-28, 235-240.
  29. ^ Tucker, Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia, 201-202 (italics in original).
  30. ^ Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., "The Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies: A Report to the Profession", Conference on Communist Studies, Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September, 1975. Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Conference Report, "Technology and Communist Culture: Bellagio, Italy, August 22–28, 1975," Technology and Culture (The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology), XVIII, 4 (October, 1977), 659-665.
  31. ^ Edited by Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., from 1970-1975 at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
  32. ^ Robert C. Tucker, "Memoir of a Stalin Biographer," International Karen Horney Society (last updated, June 18, 2002), 1.
  33. ^ Tucker, "Memoir of a Stalin Biographer," pg. 6.
  34. ^ Tucker, "Memoir of a Stalin Biographer," pg. 6 (italics added).
  35. ^ Tucker, Politics as Leadership, rev. ed., xi.

References Edit

External links Edit

  • by John M. Whiteley at the University of California-Irvine Quest for Peace Video Series.
  • @KatrinaNation Announces the Death of Robert C. Tucker – Death announcement.
  • "Memoir of a Stalin Biographer", International Karen Horney Society, 2002.
  • Stephen F. Cohen, "In Memoriam: Robert C. Tucker," PS: Political Science & Politics, vol. 44, no. 1 (January, 2011), 168. Obituary. [2]
  • Lars T. Lih, Stephen F. Cohen, Robert English, Michael Kraus, and Robert Sharlet, "Robert C. Tucker, 1918-2010," Slavic Review, vol. 70, no. 1 (Spring, 2011), 242–245. Obituary.
  • New York Times "Robert C. Tucker, A Scholar of Marx, Stalin and Soviet Affairs Dies at 92". [3] Obituary.
  • Washington Post "Robert C. Tucker, 92, dies; scholar of Soviet-era politics and history." [4] Obituary.

robert, tucker, this, article, possibly, contains, original, research, please, improve, verifying, claims, made, adding, inline, citations, statements, consisting, only, original, research, should, removed, march, 2021, learn, when, remove, this, template, mes. This article possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed March 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Robert Charles Tucker May 29 1918 July 29 2010 was an American political scientist and historian Tucker is best remembered as a biographer of Joseph Stalin and as an analyst of the Soviet political system which he saw as dynamic rather than unchanging Contents 1 Biography 2 Basic ideas 2 1 Stalinism 2 2 De Stalinization 2 3 Dual Russia 2 4 Political culture 2 5 Authoritarian political systems 2 6 Political leadership 2 7 Communist studies and the social sciences 3 Works 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External linksBiography EditBorn in Kansas City Missouri he was a Sovietologist at Princeton University He graduated from Harvard College earning an A B magna cum laude in 1939 followed by an A M in 1941 He served as an attache at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944 1953 He received his PhD degree from Harvard University in 1958 his doctoral dissertation was later revised and published as a book His biographies of Joseph Stalin are cited by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies as his greatest contribution citation needed At Princeton he started the Russian Studies Program and held the position of Professor of Politics Emeritus and IBM Professor of International Studies Emeritus until he died Tucker was a scholar of Russia and politics His viewpoints were shaped by nine years 1944 1953 of diplomatic and translation work in wartime and postwar Russia including persistent efforts to bring his Russian wife to the United States 1 by wide ranging interdisciplinary interests in the social sciences and humanities notably history psychology and philosophy and by creative initiatives to benefit from and contribute to comparative political studies especially theories of political culture and leadership Tucker married a Russian Eugenia Evgeniia Pestretsova who eventually emigrated with him and taught Russian for many years at Princeton His daughter Elizabeth is a senior editor on the radio program Marketplace American Public Media 2 Her husband Tucker s son in law Robert English is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California Basic ideas EditTucker s Harvard University doctoral dissertation was in philosophy and challenged the dominant interpretations of Soviet and Western theorists He linked the ideas of the young and mature Karl Marx and emphasized their moralist ethical and religious rather than political economic and social essence His revised dissertation was published as Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx 1961 and was followed by a collection of innovative essays on Marxian theories of revolution modernization and distributive justice as well as comprehensive anthologies of the writings of Marx Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin 3 Tucker presented lucidly formulated views on tsarist and Soviet politics He affirmed that change in Soviet political leadership was even more important than continuity in Russian political culture He contended that psychological differences were more important than ideological similarities in Soviet leadership politics and that Lenin Joseph Stalin Nikita Khrushchev Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev had very different personalities and mentalities 4 He emphasized that the different psychological make ups of Russia s top political leaders invariably produced different perceptions of situations and options which in turn periodically altered policymaking and implementation procedures as well as domestic and foreign policies He argued that systemic changes came not only in October 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power and in December 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed but also in the mid 1930s when Lenin s one party dictatorship was transformed into Stalin s one man dictatorship and in the mid 1950s when oligarchic one party rule filled the power vacuum created by the dictator s death He underscored that Soviet and post Soviet Russia s political development progressed in distinctive stages which were the products of leading officials choices among viable options at key junctures Tucker s main stages were War Communism 1917 1921 New Economic Policy 1921 1928 Revolution from Above 1928 1937 Neo Tsarist Autocracy 1937 1953 Thaw 1953 1964 Stagnation 1964 1985 and Perestroika 1985 1991 5 Stalinism EditWhile involuntarily remaining in Stalinist Russia Tucker was greatly influenced by psychoanalytical theories of neurosis paranoia and self idealization He recognized such traits in Stalin and hypothesized that psychological needs psychopathological tendencies and politicized psychodynamics were not only core elements of Stalin s ruling personality but also of Stalinism as a system of rule and Stalinization as the process of establishing that rule Neo Tsarist Autocracy 6 I hold that Stalinism must be recognized as an historically distinct and specific phenomenon which did not flow directly from Leninism although Leninism was an important contributory factor Stalinism despite conservative reactionary or counter revolutionary elements in its makeup was a revolutionary phenomenon in essence Stalinist revolution from above whatever the contingencies involved in its inception and pattern was an integral phase of the Russian revolutionary process as a whole notable among the causal factors explaining why the Stalinist revolution occurred or why it took the form it did are the heritage of Bolshevik revolutionism the heritage of old Russia and the mind and personality of Stalin 7 These themes were developed from comparative theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives and were documented at length in Tucker s magnum opus the two published volumes of an unfinished three volume biography of Stalin and in other important works on Stalin and Stalinism 8 Tucker rejected the view that Stalinism was an unavoidable ineluctable or necessary product of Leninism He highlighted the similarities between tsarist and Stalinist nationalism and patrimonialism as well as the warlike brutality of the Revolution from Above in the 1930s The chief causes of this revolution were Stalin s voracious appetite for personal political and national power and his relentless quest for personal political and national security The chief consequences were the consolidation of Stalin s personal dictatorship the creation of a military industrial complex and the collectivization and urbanization of the peasantry And the chief means of achieving these ends included blood purges of party and state elites centralized economic management and slave labor camps and genocidal famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan 9 Stalin s irrational premonitions trepidations and aggressions intermixed with his rational perceptions predispositions and calculations decisively influenced Soviet domestic politics and foreign policies during and after World War II Of particular significance were Stalin s forced resettlement of entire non Russian nationality groups skillful negotiations with wartime allies atomic espionage reimposition of harsh controls in postwar Russia imposition of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and Cold War military industrial geopolitical and ideological rivalry with the United States 10 De Stalinization Edit When Stalin died in 1953 Tucker experienced intense elation for personal and political reasons 11 His wife Evgenia Pestretsova was soon granted a visa to the United States and his mother in law joined them a half decade later after a face to face request to Khrushchev Tucker saw a gradually albeit fitfully liberalizing Soviet polity economy and society and an improving Soviet American relations with prospects for much less conflict and much more cooperation citation needed For Tucker Stalin s demise posed the question What shall take the place of Stalinism as a mode of rule and pattern of policy and ideas The central issues in Soviet politics were the desirability forms limits and tempo of de Stalinization 12 As Tucker detailed in The Soviet Political Mind 1963 and 1971 rev ed and Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 1987 Stalin s successors did not consensually craft a post Stalinist political system An oligarchic system emerged as the byproduct of struggle over power and policy among reformist and conservative party and state leaders whose factions and coalitions increasingly sought the support of subnational party and state officials Forswearing the use of violence to resolve intraparty disputes and outmaneuvering rivals in bureaucratic infighting Khrushchev revitalized the party and reasserted its leading role vis a vis the state bureaucracies But his international and domestic hare brained schemes above all the Cuban Missile Crisis led to his ouster by Brezhnev s collective leadership whose costly and prolonged military buildup helped to produce in Tucker s apt words a swollen state and a spent society 13 Gorbachev made glasnost perestroika and democratization the centerpieces of a revolutionary ideology which sparked a divisive public debate about the political content and policy implications of these concepts More revolutionary in the late 1980s Gorbachev discarded the Brezhnev doctrine withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghanistan and allowing East European countries in the Soviet bloc to choose their own types of political system And most revolutionary from late 1990 to late 1991 Gorbachev unintentionally and Boris Yeltsin intentionally spurred the disintegration of the Soviet Union enabling the fifteen union republics to develop their own types of nation state Gorbachev at the time was the indirectly elected president of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin was the directly elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic 14 by far the largest and most important union republic The rivalry between Gorbachev and Yeltsin unequivocally confirmed Tucker s contention that the personalities and mentalities of top Soviet leaders could clash viscerally and vindictively Tucker had long insisted that intraparty conflict was a catalyst of change in both Soviet policymaking procedures and substantive policies He observed in 1957 Probably the most important single failing of Soviet studies in the West has been a general tendency to take pretty much at face value the Communist pretension to a monolithic system of politics Not monolithic unity but the fiction of it prevails in Soviet politics The ruling party has rarely if ever been the disciplined phalanx pictured by its image makers and Lenin s well known Resolution on Party Unity of 1921 has largely been honored in the breach 15 Tucker was keenly aware that Soviet ideology could divide or unify leading party officials and could weaken or strengthen party discipline 16 During the Gorbachev years a reformist official ideology clashed with a conservative operational ideology and this conflict fractured the party In 1987 Tucker affirmed Marxism Leninism is not at present a rigidly defined set of dogma that allows no scope for differences of interpretation on matters of importance as it was earlier on Gorbachev is propounding his own version of it while recognizing and deploring that far from all his party comrades share it 17 Indeed freer expression of aspirations and grievances destabilized as well as de Stalinized state society relations and disintegrated as well as democratized the Soviet polity and society original research Dual Russia Edit Tucker coined the concept of dual Russia This concept focuses attention on the psychological rift between the Russian state and society and on the we they mentality of Russia s coercive elites and coerced masses 18 The relation between the state and the society is seen as one between conqueror and conquered Tucker stressed that this evaluative attitude was embraced and reinforced by the most violent and impatient state building and social engineering tsars especially Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great Tucker also stressed that Alexander II tried to narrow the gulf between the two Russias but his liberalizing reform from above coincided with the rise of an organized revolutionary movement from below 19 Indeed expectations and assessments of dual Russia seem to have greatly influenced the decisions and actions of tsars and commissars revolutionaries and bureaucrats and ordinary citizens of Russian and non Russian ethnicity Tucker underscored that most tsars and tsarist officials viewed state society relations as hostile and that most of the huge serf peasantry small urban proletariat and tiny educated stratum had similarly hostile views But Tucker did not observe a stable or complementary relationship between authoritarian Russian elites and obeisant Russian masses Instead he saw mounting pressures from social units and networks for an unbinding of the state s control of society Tucker s illiterate serf and literate proletarian view the tsarist state as an abstract entity and an alien power 20 His collective farmer resents enserfment and his factory worker resents exploitation in Stalin s socialist revolution And his post Stalin democratic dissident and liberal intellectual actively and passively reject dual Russia Tucker used the concept of dual Russia to elucidate a very important component of de Stalinization The Khrushchev regime it would appear looks to a rise in the material standard of consumption as a means of reconciling the Russian people to unfreedom in perpetuity But it is doubtful that a policy of reform operating within these narrow limits can repair the rupture between the state and society that is reflected in the revival of the image of a dual Russia A moral renovation of the national life a fundamental reordering of relations a process of genuine unbinding or in other words an alternation in the nature of the system would be needed 21 In short Tucker viewed dual Russia as a core element of the tsarist Soviet and post Soviet political systems and he affirmed that systemic change must be founded on spiritual healing of state society relations Political culture Edit Tucker distinguished between real and ideal culture and between macro level and micro level culture Real cultural patterns consist of prevalent practices in a society ideal patterns consist of accepted norms values and beliefs A macro level culture is a society s complex totality of patterns and sub patterns of traditions and orientations micro level cultural elements are individual patterns and clusters of them Cultural patterns are ingrained by custom in the conduct and thoughtways of large numbers of people More like an anthropologist than a political scientist Tucker included behavior as well as values attitudes and beliefs in his concept of culture 22 Tucker affirmed that a strength of the concept of political culture as an analytic tool in comparison with such macro concepts as modernization and development is its micro macro and real ideal character He studied these four characteristics individually and in various juxtapositions configurations and interactions And he hypothesized that different components of political culture can have differing fates in times of radical change especially in revolutionary transitions from one type of political system to another and from one stage of political development to another 23 Tucker corroborated this hypothesis with evidence from the Soviet Union In 1987 he affirmed The pattern of thinking one thing in private and being conformist in public will not vanish or radically change simply because glasnost has come into currency as a watchword of policy Changing the pattern will take time and effort and above all some risk taking openness in action by citizens who speak up and forsake the pattern of pretence which for so long has governed public life in their country 24 In 1993 he elaborated Although communism as a belief system is dying out in post Soviet Russia very many of the real culture patterns of the Soviet period including that very bureaucratism that made a comeback after the revolutionary break in 1917 are still tenaciously holding on 25 And in 1995 he added The banning of the CPSU the elimination of communism as a state creed and the breakup of the USSR as an imperial formation marked in a deep sense the ending of the Soviet era But in part because of the abruptness with which these events came about much of the statist Soviet system and political culture survived into the 1990s 26 As Tucker saw it the ideal and macro political cultures of the Communist party collapsed with the Soviet Union but the real and micro political cultures of tsarist and Soviet Russia adapted to the emerging governmental commercial legal and moral cultures of post Soviet Russia He underscored the impact of tsarist political culture on Soviet political culture and in turn their combined impact on post Soviet political culture Tucker was not a historical determinist but he observed that centuries old statism was alive and well in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union Authoritarian political systems Edit This section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed March 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Tucker coined the concept of the revolutionary mass movement regime under single party auspices which he viewed as a general type of authoritarian regime with communist fascist and nationalist variants Tucker s purpose was to stimulate both cross national and cross temporal comparisons of authoritarian political systems and social movements He hypothesized that Soviet Russian history is one of different movements and of different Soviet regimes within a framework of continuity of organizational forms and official nomenclature 27 Tucker put emphasis on the top Soviet leader s mental health and its ramifications for political change and continuity The psychological or psychopathological needs and wants of a movement regime s leader are the driving force of the political mechanism and the movement regime is a highly complicated instrumentality for expressing the leader s primal emotions in political behavior Stalin s self glorification lust for power megalomania paranoia and cruelty are viewed as integral components of Stalinist real culture operative ideology dictatorial decision making domestic and foreign policies policy implementation and resistance and state penetration and domination of society Tucker sought not only to describe and document Stalin s motives and beliefs but also to explain their psychological origins interactive development and tangible consequences for Stalin individually and for Stalinist rule Tucker s focus on the diverse mind sets and skill sets of Soviet leaders supported his early critique of the totalitarian model which he faulted for paying insufficient attention to the institutionalized pathologies and idiosyncrasies of autocrats and oligarchs Tucker also criticized the totalitarian model for downplaying the conflicts and cleavages inefficiencies and incompatibilities and departmentalism and localism in purportedly monolithic and monopolistic regimes He noted that an autocrat s top lieutenants often were bitter rivals rank and file party officials often withheld negative information from their superiors and family groups or clans often resisted state controls in informal and ingenious ways Having lived and worked in Stalin s Russia for nine years Tucker had rich experiential knowledge and instinctive comprehension of everyday life in the USSR which included family friends favors work and bureaucracy as well as fear deprivation persecution surveillance and hypocrisy He could feel as well as analyze the similarities and differences between the realities and ideals of Soviet totalitarianism And because the totalitarian model was the dominant cross national component of Sovietology Tucker called for more and better comparative analysis of Soviet politics and for mutually beneficial ties with mainstream political science He rejected the theoretical isolationism of Sovietology and its widely held presupposition that Soviet politics was a unique subject matter Political leadership Edit This section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed March 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message Tucker compared Soviet and tsarist Russian political leaders as well as various types of political leadership in various contexts In Politics as Leadership 1981 he argued that leadership is the essence of politics He analyzed the diagnostic prescriptive and mobilizing functions of leadership He surveyed the process of political leadership leadership through social movements and leadership and the human situation He underscored that a leader s definition of a situation could be self fulfilling and must be communicated effectively to different audiences And he elaborated on the key sociopsychological maxim that situations defined as real are real in their consequences The political process is influenced by many a material factor but it has its prime locus in the mind Not only is it a mental process when leaders learn about and analyze the causes of circumstances that have arisen when they interpret the circumstances meaning in relation to various concerns when they define the problem situation for their political communities and decide on what seems the proper prescription for collective action Mental processes are also pivotally involved now in the minds of followers or potential followers when leadership appeals for positive response to its policy prescription 28 Tucker contrasted constitutional and nonconstitutional states especially their respective political cultures and leadership prerogatives What distinguishes constitutional forms of statehood is that no one be it a ruling person a government in power or a ruling party may act on the principle L Etat c est moi I am the state For the state is the body of citizens together with the collectively self accepted system of laws by which they are governed and which center in the constitution The result is a disjunction between loyalty to the state and agreement with the policies of a particular government in power or acceptance of that government as a desirable one for the nation That it seems is the essence of constitutionalism as a political culture open plurality of political groups or parties is an institutional derivative of this disjunction Where constitutionalism does not exist even though a constitutional charter may have been formally proclaimed the authorities treat disagreement with the given government s or ruling party s policies or disapproval of the government itself as disloyalty to the state In effect they say L Etat c est nous We are the state 29 Briefly stated Tucker stressed the importance of political leadership He contended that the psychological characteristics of autocrats varied greatly as did their personal and policy priorities and their policymaking and administrative capabilities He affirmed that oligarchs perceived opportunities and liabilities in diverse ways and often struggled over power and policy especially at historical turning points with viable options An avid scholar of Russian history Tucker scrutinized the interaction between the tsarist autocracy and the revolutionary movement He emphasized the Russian rather than the Marxian roots of Bolshevism He highlighted the differences between Lenin s one party dictatorship and Stalin s one man dictatorship He illuminated the similarities between tsarist and Stalinist state building and social engineering He elucidated the domestic and international politics of de Stalinization in Soviet and post Soviet Russia And he argued that the animosities anxieties and incompatibilities of the two Russias weakened the legitimacy efficacy and stability of tsarist communist and post communist regimes Communist studies and the social sciences Edit What younger generations of comparativists in political science may not know according to whom is that Tucker was at the forefront of efforts to bring the comparative study of communist systems into the discipline of political science and the field of comparative politics In 1969 he assumed chairmanship of the Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation During his six year tenure as chair the Planning Group convened a number of international conferences that shed new light on the similarities and differences among communist regimes The proceedings of these conferences were reported to the profession through the publication of several conference volumes 30 Tucker s tenure as chair also saw the expansion of the Planning Group s Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism which presented shorter discussion pieces on the subject of its masthead 31 The intellectual tone for much of the work of the Planning Group under Tucker s leadership was set by his paper Culture Political Culture and Soviet Studies written for a 1971 conference on Communist Political Culture convened at Arden House in Harriman New York Subsequently published in Political Science Quarterly 1973 and as the opening chapter in his book Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 1987 that paper set forth the hypothesis that if Communism in practice tends to be an amalgam of an innovated cultural system Marxism and elements of a national cultural ethos then divergences of national cultural ethos will be one of the factors making for developmental diversity and cultural tension between different Marxist movements Subsequent conferences of the Planning Group explored the extent of those divergences and developmental diversities including a third element in the amalgam that Tucker had overlooked components of imported foreign culture including technology but to which he was quite receptive original research Although perhaps best known for his seminal trilogy on Stalin the third volume of which remained unfinished at the time of his death the corpus of Tucker s scholarly work was significant among other reasons for moving communism studies and particularly Soviet studies away from narrow area studies and helping to place them within the parameters of political science and the social sciences His desire to move Soviet studies in that direction can be found in one of his earliest works on the first page of an article entitled Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement Regimes published in The American Political Science Review 1961 This article was reprinted in an important collection of Tucker s early essays The Soviet Political Mind 1963 rev ed 1971 that included such important essays as The Image of Dual Russia a classic piece promotion that is still assigned in graduate and undergraduate courses on Soviet and Russian politics citation needed Tucker s highly regarded work promotion on Stalin drew on the theories of psychologist Karen Horney providing insights into the feared and still revered by some in Russia Soviet leader and demonstrating the significance of psychological theories for understanding political leadership Rather than merely describing Stalin s cruelty paranoia and mental quirks Tucker was more concerned with explaining Stalin s psychological make up And that is where Horney s theories proved invaluable to him He found in Horney s work the study of neurotic character structure which included such attributes as the search for glory and a need for vindictive triumph 32 It was Horney s 1950 book Neurosis and Human Growth that particularly inspired him while serving on the staff of the American Embassy in Moscow at the time A half century later he was quite candid in acknowledging the role of that work in the development of his own thinking Instead of dealing in such abstract categories from a book of psychology I was now using that book as guidance in a biographer s effort to portray his subject as an individual 33 Notwithstanding his intellectual fascination with Horney s unusual hypothesis Tucker in the end confessed that his biography of Stalin never became fortunately the political science tract that it started out to be 34 He was quick to add however that neither did it become a conventional biography of a historically influential person While this may indicate growing frustration at his own attempts to marry Soviet studies and the social sciences he nevertheless remained sympathetic to and supportive of such attempts by his own students and colleagues Tucker s interest in political leadership was by no means confined to Stalin Indeed he addressed the subject of political leadership in a much broader context in his 1981 book Politics as Leadership in which he viewed politics as leadership rather than as power Such an approach Tucker argued was more useful to students of society since it was more comprehensive and could open up more areas to political analysis than could the more orthodox view of politics as power In his preface to the 1995 revised edition of the book Tucker restated two fundamental propositions that had guided his inquiries into political leadership 1 political leadership often makes a crucial difference in the lives of states and other human communities and 2 leadership although the term itself has a positive resonance can be a malignant force in human affairs as well as a force for good 35 His collected works clearly demonstrated the veracity of both propositions Works EditTucker Robert C 1961 Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 7658 0644 4 Tucker Robert C 1971 1963 The Soviet Political Mind Stalinism and Post Stalin Change Rev ed New York Norton ISBN 0 393 00582 8 Tucker Robert C Cohen Stephen F eds 1965 The Great Purge Trial New York Grosset amp Dunlap LCCN 65 14751 Tucker Robert C 1969 The Marxian Revolutionary Idea New York Norton ISBN 0 393 00539 9 Marx Karl Engels Friedrich 1972 Tucker Robert C ed The Marx Engels Reader New York Norton ISBN 0 393 09040 X Lenin Vladimir 1977 Tucker Robert C ed The Lenin Anthology New York Norton ISBN 0 393 09236 4 Tucker Robert C ed 1977 Stalinism Essays in Historical Interpretation New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 8133 2491 2 Tucker Robert C 1987 Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 393 95798 5 Tucker Robert C 1988 Stalin as Revolutionary 1879 1929 New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 393 00738 3 Tucker Robert C 1990 Stalin in Power The Revolution from Above 1928 1941 New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 0 393 02881 X Tucker Robert C 1995 1981 Politics as Leadership Rev ed Columbia Mo University of Missouri Press ISBN 0 8262 1023 6 Tucker Robert C Colton Timothy J eds 1995 Patterns in Post Soviet Leadership Boulder CO Westview Press ISBN 0 8133 2492 0 See also EditEnemy complex a phrase used by TuckerNotes Edit Martin Douglas Robert C Tucker a Scholar of Marx Stalin and Soviet Affairs Dies at 92 The New York Times August 1 2010 p A4 Cast and Crew Retrieved 28 July 2011 Robert C Tucker Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx Cambridge England Cambridge University Press 1961 Robert C Tucker The Marxian Revolutionary Idea New York Norton 1969 Robert C Tucker ed The Marx Engels Reader New York Norton 1972 and Robert C Tucker ed The Lenin Anthology New York Norton 1975 Robert C Tucker ed The Soviet Political Mind New York Norton rev ed 1971 ch 9 207 and 225 Many outstanding articles were reprinted in Robert C Tucker The Soviet Political Mind Stalinism and Post Stalin Change New York Norton 1963 and rev ed 1971 and Robert C Tucker Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia From Lenin to Gorbachev New York Norton 1987 Tucker The Dictator and Totalitarianism in The Soviet Political Mind rev ed 30 32 42 and Stalin in Power 1 9 ff Tucker Stalinism as Revolution from Above in Robert C Tucker ed Stalinism Essays in Historical Interpretation New York Norton 1977 77 108 quote at 78 italics in original a shorter version was reprinted in Tucker Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 72 107 quote at 73 italics in original Robert C Tucker Stalin as Revolutionary 1879 1929 A Study in History and Personality New York Norton 1973 Robert C Tucker Stalin in Power The Revolution from Above 1928 1941 Robert C Tucker and Stephen F Cohen eds The Great Purge Trial New York Grosset amp Dunlap 1965 and Tucker ed Stalinism Tucker Swollen State Spent Society Stalin s Legacy to Brezhnev s Russia in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 116 ff and in Erik P Hoffmann and Robbin F Laird eds The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era Hawthorne NY Aldine Publishing Co 1984 48 ff John Lewis Gaddis The Cold War A New History London Penguin 2007 8 14 Robert C Tucker Memoir of a Stalin Biographer The International Karen Horney Society 6 last updated June 18 2002 Tucker The Politics of Soviet De Stalinization in The Soviet Political Mind rev ed 199 Tucker Robert C Swollen State Spent Society in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 108 139 and in Hoffmann and Laird eds The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era 41 67 Charles E Ziegler The History of Russia 146 Tucker The Politics of Soviet De Stalinization in The Soviet Political Mind rev ed 197 italics in original Robert V Daniels The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia New Haven Yale University Press 2007 390 99 Tucker Conclusion 205 and To Change a Political Culture Gorbachev and the Fight for Soviet Reform 140 98 in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia Tucker The Image of Dual Russia in The Soviet Political Mind rev ed 122 italics in original Tucker The Image of Dual Russia pg 125 Tucker The Image of Dual Russia pp 122 125 italics added Tucker The Image of Dual Russia pg 141 italics added Robert C Tucker Sovietology and Russian History Post Soviet Affairs 8 3 July September 1992 190 191 italics added Tucker Sovietology and Russian History pg 191 Tucker Sovietology and Russian History pp 190 193 and Tucker Gorbachev and the Fight for Soviet Reform in Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 184 185 italics in original Robert C Tucker Foreword in Frederic J Fleron Jr and Erik P Hoffmann eds Post Communist Studies and Political Science Methodology and Empirical Theory in Sovietology Boulder CO Westview Press 1993 xi xii Robert C Tucker Post Soviet Leadership and Change in Timothy J Colton and Robert C Tucker eds Patterns in Post Soviet Leadership Boulder CO Westview Press 1995 9 26 Tucker On Revolutionary Mass Movement Regimes in The Soviet Political Mind rev ed 7 16 18 italics in original On Stalin s personality see also chapters 2 5 Robert C Tucker Politics as Leadership Columbia MO University of Missouri Press 1981 rev ed 1995 17 19 59 113 114 quotes at 17 and 59 of rev ed On the linkages between political leadership and political culture see also Tucker Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia and Tucker s two chapters in Colton and Tucker eds Patterns in Post Soviet Leadership 5 28 235 240 Tucker Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia 201 202 italics in original Frederic J Fleron Jr The Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies A Report to the Profession Conference on Communist Studies Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association San Francisco September 1975 Frederic J Fleron Jr Conference Report Technology and Communist Culture Bellagio Italy August 22 28 1975 Technology and Culture The International Quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology XVIII 4 October 1977 659 665 Edited by Frederic J Fleron Jr from 1970 1975 at the State University of New York at Buffalo Robert C Tucker Memoir of a Stalin Biographer International Karen Horney Society last updated June 18 2002 1 Tucker Memoir of a Stalin Biographer pg 6 Tucker Memoir of a Stalin Biographer pg 6 italics added Tucker Politics as Leadership rev ed xi References EditTucker Robert C Colton Timothy J eds 1995 Patterns in Post Soviet Leadership Boulder CO Westview Press ISBN 0 8133 2492 0 Daniels Robert V 2007 The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia New Haven CT Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 10649 7 Fleron Jr Frederic J 1975 The Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies A Report to the Profession San Francisco Conference on Communist Studies Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Fleron Jr Frederic J 1975 Technology and Communist Culture Technology and Culture Society for the History of Technology 20 1 252 255 doi 10 2307 3103149 ISSN 0040 165X JSTOR 3103149 Gaddis John Lewis 2007 The Cold War A New History London Penguin ISBN 978 1 59420 062 5 Planning Group on Comparative Communist Studies 1969 1975 Newsletter of Comparative Studies of Communism New York American Council of Learned Societies Tucker Robert C 1961 Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 7658 0644 4 Tucker Robert C Cohen Stephen F eds 1965 The Great Purge Trial New York Grosset amp Dunlap LCCN 65 14751 Tucker Robert C 1971 1963 The Soviet Political Mind Stalinism and Post Stalin Change Rev ed New York Norton ISBN 0 393 00582 8 Tucker Robert C 1969 The Marxian Revolutionary Idea New York Norton ISBN 0 393 00539 9 Marx Karl Engels Friedrich 1972 Tucker Robert C ed The Marx Engels Reader New York Norton ISBN 0 393 09040 X Tucker Robert C 1973 Stalin as Revolutionary 1879 1929 A Study in History and Personality New York Norton ISBN 1 59740 443 8 Lenin Vladimir 1977 Tucker Robert C ed The Lenin Anthology New York Norton ISBN 0 393 09236 4 Tucker Robert C ed 1975 Stalinism Essays in Historical Interpretation New York Norton ISBN 0 393 00892 4 Tucker Robert C 1995 1981 Politics as Leadership Rev ed Columbia Mo University of Missouri Press ISBN 0 8262 1023 6 Tucker Robert C 1987 Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia From Lenin to Gorbachev New York Norton ISBN 0 393 95798 5 Tucke Robert C 1990 Stalin in Power The Revolution from Above 1928 1941 New York Norton ISBN 0 393 30869 3 Tucker Robert C 1992 Sovietology and Russian History Post Soviet Affairs 8 3 175 196 doi 10 1080 1060586X 1992 10641351 ISSN 1060 586X Tucker Robert C 1993 Foreword In Fleron Jr Fredric J Hoffman Erik P eds Post Communist Studies and Political Science Methodology and Empirical Theory in Sovietology Boulder CO Westview Press ISBN 0 8133 1685 5 Tucker Robert C 1985 A Stalin Biographer s Memoir In Baron Samuel H Pletsch Carl eds Introspection in Biography The Biographer s Quest for Self awareness New York Routledge ISBN 0 88163 035 7 Ziegler Charles E 1999 The History of Russia Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 0 313 30393 2 External links EditInterview by John M Whiteley at the University of California Irvine Quest for Peace Video Series KatrinaNation Announces the Death of Robert C Tucker Death announcement Memoir of a Stalin Biographer International Karen Horney Society 2002 1 Stephen F Cohen In Memoriam Robert C Tucker PS Political Science amp Politics vol 44 no 1 January 2011 168 Obituary 2 Lars T Lih Stephen F Cohen Robert English Michael Kraus and Robert Sharlet Robert C Tucker 1918 2010 Slavic Review vol 70 no 1 Spring 2011 242 245 Obituary New York Times Robert C Tucker A Scholar of Marx Stalin and Soviet Affairs Dies at 92 3 Obituary Washington Post Robert C Tucker 92 dies scholar of Soviet era politics and history 4 Obituary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Robert C Tucker amp oldid 1161095738, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, 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