Brezhnev and 'Stagnation'?

‘[Brezhnev] restored the rural district committees and the original role of regional Party committees. … It was a well-tried Stalinist policy. Under Stalin it was sustained by a system of repression, whereas under Brezhnev it became a ‘social contract’ of sorts between the exponents of power.’

When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in April 1985, for some, a ‘new era began.’  Fedor Burlatsky clarifies this:

‘We were happy to have lived to see this moment and immediately got down to work, trying to build a bridge from Khrushchëv’s Thaw to the new and inspiring prospects of structural, economic and political reform.’

And with this propagandistic vinculum of Gorbachev’s accession to that of Khrushchëv ’s in the early 1960s, the interceding ‘age’ of Brezhnevschina developed a modern congruence to a pseudo-Petrarchian ‘Dark Age’.  Gorbachev’s portrayal of Brezhnev as ‘neo-Stalinist’ says more about the uses of ‘Stalin’ in the final years of the Soviet Union as it does about the Brezhnev years of power.   Beginning in 1986, glasnost produced an intellectual effect on Soviet society that encouraged increasing criticism of Stalin and Stalinism within a general reconsideration of the Soviet past.  The Georgian film, Pokayanie (Repentance), was released for mass showing and became accepted as the most significant event of this ‘thaw’.   Gorbachev’s castigation of the Brezhnev era as reverting to Stalinism therefore carries the weight of contemporary significance and thus requires further validation.

Nonetheless, it does remain that much of the criticism levelled at the Brezhnev regime does have a degree of veracity.  In fact, looking at the Brezhnev regime – and Brezhnev the man in particular – makes it rather difficult to repudiate the image of neo-Stalinism and stagnation.  Certainly, Leonid Brezhnev’s character remains reasonably analogous of the character of the Soviet State during the regime.  He seems to have had, by numerous accounts, a rather stagnant personality – he was the archetypal apparatchik.  For instance, his diary notes for 16 May 1976 that he ‘[went] nowhere – rang no one, likewise no one me – haircut, shaved and washed hair’.  Likewise, on 7 August 1976, he dutifully notes that he used a ‘children’s soap’ for washing his hair that day.   His position of power, as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982, evolved slowly from the central cog in a consensual collective leadership to that of (almost) apotheosised symbol of a steadfast and firmly entrenched regime.  Yet, it would be unfair to analogise the seeming insularity displayed in Brezhnev’s diary to that of the regime.  Although it is plausible to assert that ‘the technological revolution that had begun in the rest of the world passed [the Soviet Union] by’,  it remains notable that the Brezhnev regime attempted to enact a bold foreign policy that, although leading to disappointment at almost every turn, was anything but isolated or parochial.   Yet boldness of style and dynamic leadership were most certainly not the reasons for Brezhnev’s almost unanimously supported rise to leadership. After the ‘dynamism’, unpredictability and popular appeal of Khrushchëv’s reign, Brezhnev’s nomination to the leadership (largely collective though it initially was) was a response to the desires within the highest echelon of the CPSU for a measure of stability and a restoration of material privileges to the leadership.   This reaction against popular desires was as much a response to the end of Joseph Stalin’s leadership than it was to Khrushchëv’s which would then suggest that it would indeed be meaningful to describe the Brezhnev regime as ‘neo-Stalinist’.

Yet, this assertion will be called to question, as there are reasonable grounds for denying such a charge.  An audit of the nature of Brezhnev’s power-base will demonstrate that within the early years of the regime, caution and re-assurance of his colleagues were essential considerations.  A brief examination of Brezhnev’s political policies will demonstrate a desire for reforms that in many ways were not entirely dissimilar (in some cases) from those of Khrushchëv.  Finally, if the Brezhnev regime can indeed be cast as neo-Stalinist, then the ideology of the regime, that of ‘Developed Socialism’, befits the phlegmatic nature of the regime.  The regime showed itself unwilling to rise to the Khrushchëvian utopianism that aimed to arrive at a state of Communism by the 1980s.  In recanting this, the regime cast Khrushchëv’s ‘Thaw’ as merely an interlude, insinuating a continuation of Stalinism.  This also requires examination.

The foundations of Brezhnev’s power-base can be found in the euphemistically titled ‘October Plenum’ of 1964 that ignominiously terminated Khrushchëv’s presence within the CPSU and inaugurated Brezhnev’s dominance. It is significant in that it ended the Khrushchëv regime ‘not with a bang but with a whimper’.  The ‘coup’ is also significant in that the chief plotters are considered by many to have been motivated, not by Brezhnev himself (only having been consulted late in the scheming), but by the neo-Stalinist orientated Aleksandr Shelepin and Mikhail Suslov.  This is, in light of new evidence, questionable; Brezhnev’s role is now considered by many to have been of far greater importance.   The manner in which Brezhnev came to power, on the back of reactionary ideology, was pertinent to the remainder of his tenure.  As ‘Khrushchëv’ and ‘Khrushchëvism’ replaced ‘Stalin’ and ‘Stalinism’ in the role of ‘other’,  the new regime presented the image of a majority consensus that belied many of the different interests at work in the Politburo.   Brezhnev’s role as part of a ‘collective leadership’ began as a balancing of opposing ideologies: conservatism, which had installed him in power, and liberalism, of which he also had supporters (such as Alexei Kosygin) believing that he would, and indeed could, continue many of Khrushchëv’s reforms – only in a more decorous manner. 

The conservative element in Brezhnev’s Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee may be, on the whole, described as being divisible into two largely similar elements: moderate-conservative and neo-Stalinist.  Of the two, the neo-Stalinists were largely predominant.  They consisted not only of a ‘large part of the party and state apparatus, especially in the middle ranks’, but also in, as Roy Medvedev points out, ‘in the regional and city party committees and the ideological bureaucrats.’   If it seems remarkable that a strong neo-Stalinist ideology should have been so widespread and prevalent within the party, then it should be noted, as Archie Brown does, that neo-Stalinism was particularly appealing to party workers aged between forty-five and fifty-five; those who were too young to have experienced the purges of the party in the late 1930s,  and perhaps too old to have been heavily influenced by greater cultural and political liberalism in the early Khrushchëv years before 1961.  It is nonetheless plausible to note, as Peter Kenez does, that the Brezhnev leadership rose through the ranks of the Party ‘in the 1930s when there were many openings in the top leadership’; these men were ‘the beneficiaries of the terror.’   Yet, there is need of a basic defining of the term ‘neo-Stalinism’ for its relationship to Stalinism of the period 1930-53 is simply not one of straightforward imitation or restoration.  Neo-Stalinist or, more generally, conservative policies had changed throughout the duration of Khrushchëv’s reign.  By the late 1960s, Stalinism does not characterise Soviet conservatism as it had done in the early 1950s.

The moderate-conservative wing is more forbidding of definition.  They are identifiable merely as occupying the ground between the neo-Stalinists and the liberals and may have, at any given time, encompassed many members of those two ideological wings.   On most occasions, however, Brezhnev himself ostensibly sat within this grouping. 

The liberal wing of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee has been the least effectual.  Their composition was clearly identifiable, as was their progression in the early years of the regime – what might easily be characterised as the post-Khrushchëv years – until the floundering of reform after the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1968.  When the Czech First Secretary introduced measures for the reform of the economy – incentives, enterprise autonomy and other market mechanisms – the Soviet’s found ‘that economic liberalisation had extra-economic implications which posed a direct threat to the socialist system.’  The expeditious politicisation of the economic measures frightened the Politburo as they witnessed a move towards the democratisation of the Czech party and thus called for the liquidation of the measures.  The use of Soviet troops was sanctioned to ‘normalise’ Czech life.   The Czech crisis, as dramatically demonstrative of reactionary thinking within the regime as it was, was not the initial signifier of the weakness of the liberal wing – merely the ‘last straw’.  In 1965, the reform minded Kosygin had attempted, on one account ‘half-heartedly’,  on another ‘modestly’,  to modernise the Soviet economy through liberal and marginally democratic measures (such as managerial autonomy, production incentives, profit and quality).  These measures ran into a conservative wall and petered out as party control and supervision of the economy was reasserted.   The neo-Stalinist tendency to imitate the ‘command economy’ of the Stalin years, despite the differences between the two systems, should not be underestimated.

Despite the appearances, specifically in the early years, of ideological division within the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee, it remains that these divisions were only pertinent behind the high walls of the Kremlin and varied only gradually within the intermittent alterations to membership of the two separate, but imperceptibly intertwined groups.  The oligarchy that comprised the Brezhnev regime was the elite of the party and did not view themselves even as part of the broad elite; they were supreme to all and the distance between themselves and the rest ensured an altogether private world.  Although this may or may not have been candidly agreed upon at the outset of the regime, it remains one of the defining contrasts with the previous regime where political disagreement within the upper echelon of the party had often been allowed to veer into the public sphere.  As Harry Gelman points out, this concentrated privacy sustained the clannish nature of the Politburo and Secretariat and their decision-making, it shielded them from pressure from below as well as political manipulation from within.   We now need to examine those policies that the regime did aim to enact.

Despite the balancing of liberal and conservative wings within the upper echelons, Brezhnev was capable of initiating significant policy reforms of his own.  Whilst any attempt to explicitly continue the work of the now politically destitute Khrushchëv would have been venturesome, Brezhnev did seek to bring about reforms in agriculture, the production of highly desirable consumer goods and in foreign policy.  Yet, as a highly accomplished politician with keen survival instincts, he advanced these policies with caution, managing to balance his potential critics with concessions.  All major interest groups were convinced that their interests would be acknowledged.   He progressed with patience, appeasing rather than confronting.  In this way, Brezhnev’s reforms were always subordinated to internal party pressures.  As Gorbachev (not completely unreliable in his testament) noted:

‘His forte [consisted] in his ability to split rivals … He never forgot the slightest disloyalty … but he was shrewd enough to wait for an appropriate moment … never [resorting] to direct confrontation, proceeding cautiously, step by step, until he gained the upper hand.’

In this extremely cautious manner, Brezhnev’s reforms were, arguably perhaps, as far-reaching as those of Khrushchëv’s.

With the censuring of Kosygin’s economic reforms and foreign policy plans by 1968, and, one might add, his bid for political supremacy over the General Secretary, Brezhnev took up the mantle of reform – emboldened by his (albeit typically tacit) defeat of the Premier of the Soviet Union.   In the early 1970s, he propounded that reforming endeavours should be focussed on the creation of multi-enterprise associations.  Here, independent enterprises that fulfilled similar roles would become associated in order that the weaker enterprises might profit from the modernisation and research facilities of the stronger enterprises; essentially, an idea similar in many ways to that of western Corporations.  The associated enterprises were to grasp the initiative and lead the way in the introduction of new technologies and the streamlining of the workforce.   However, the problem within this implicitly sympathetic view is the failure to take account of the reality of the implementation of these ‘reforms’. 

The appearance within Brezhnev’s economic policies of a reformist spirit is misleading.  To be sure, the regime aimed at consumerism, higher agricultural output, social welfare, scientific and technological advancements equivalent or surpassing those of the United States, détentes in foreign policy, and the continued repudiation of Stalinist ‘excesses’.   For the most part, there is much of Khrushchëv within these ‘reforms’ – it is notable that Brezhnev was a significant part of the Khrushchëv regime – but they were stripped, made acceptable or palatable to the collective interests, of their key elements: decentralisation and the role of the market.   One might deduce from this that the primary motivation for these limited reforms were genuine in the need to address ever increasing problems, most specifically that of popular demand,  but they were also contingent upon the need to reinforce the status quo.   The reinforcing of the status quo, the ‘stability of cadres’, the constant tightrope act between liberal and conservative interests are the hallmarks of the Brezhnev regime.  Developed Socialism, as the adopted ideological centrepiece, legitimised this ‘stability’. 

Developed Socialism described the (apparent) emergence of the USSR as a mature industrial system whose further development relied on the employment of scientific and technological development as a solution to economic and social problems.  The concept was not a cancellation of Khrushchëv’s goal of reaching Communism by the 1980’s, rather a statement of the present position and the postponement of Communism (for the time being).   Criticisms of Developed Socialism are unfortunate in their tendency to consider the concept as a statement of voluntary stagnation; but these are too often influenced by the impact of Gorbachev.  The contemporary view understood Socialism as a historical period in its own right; Developed Socialism had the central task of perfecting the system before the final transition to Communism.  

As the concept described the (apparently) mature industrial system whose further development (correctly) relied on the employment of scientific and technological development, the Party was expected to reform itself, adopt scientific and technological advisors, and then assist in the reform of other institutions.  Despite this rather bold housekeeping initiative, reform remained illusory.  The ‘modernised’ and ‘scientifically’ qualified CPSU failed to relinquish their pervading control of every institution.  They failed to break away from heavy industrial output.  They failed to liberalise.  For instance, the protection and expansion of the prerogatives of the Party were legitimised by Developed Socialism but the price to the Party was demands for increased performance.  Party committees were to assume greater control of the economy and the running of the government.  This increased intervention was to be founded on its own technological and managerial sophistication and a newfound ability to reconcile narrow departmental interests within the broader perspective.  Developed Socialism allowed Party intervention with increasing force.

The entrenchment of the neo-Stalinist centralisation of government and the resulting control of the economic sphere gave rise to the most spectacular of all Soviet idiosyncrasies: what has become appropriately titled the ‘shadow economy’.  Burlatsky, in his overtly critical and anecdotal manner, outlines this view of the ‘shadow economy’ from the top down by quoting Brezhnev himself as alleging that

‘[nobody] lives on their wages. I remember in my youth … we earned extra money unloading freight trains … Three bags or containers would go to them and one to us.  That’s how everyone lives in this country.’ 

From this Burlatsky, perhaps rightly, acknowledges that Brezhnev ‘regarded the shadow economy as normal.’    The very dysfunctionality of the ‘command economy’, and its arithmetical manner,  ensured that capital goods (which should never have been marketed) had to be bartered for and exchanged and obtained through all manner of unorthodox means.  Networks distinct in legality from official channels soon evolved that were essential routes of procurement even for the essentials and officially apportioned resources for industrial output.  This ‘third economy’, or blat, existed and often overlapped both the official economy and the illegal black-market.   In addition to the inherent conservatism of the regime, the ‘shadow economy’ was a major obstacle to economic reform. 

Yet, this was not an obstacle that might have been overcome within the Soviet experiment; the shadow economy was an inherent contradiction within the experiment.  The absence of property actually generated corruption.  Despite frequently high wages (and thus many a person with large amounts of surplus roubles), the dearth of purchasable goods ensured that position and privilege could not be bought through legitimate means; only through corruption.  Sycophancy triumphed and was rewarded with security, stability and wage increases that further served to entrench the need to purchase privilege and power.   The overriding consequence of this system was a pseudo-feudal situation whereby patronage and clientelism undermined the lofty socialist ideals of the Party.  The most significant and detracting result was a deep cynicism with socialist way.  

Despite the dangers of post-Glasnost influences such as Gorbachev, it remains clear that the Brezhnev regime failed at every turn to modernise the country.  Castigation of the era as ‘stagnant’ hold cogency even in the face of the reforms that Brezhnev instituted.  Questions surrounding the effectiveness of implementation of these reforms were addressed prior to Gorbachev’s time.  ‘The Institute of Sociological Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted a study on the effectiveness of decisions taken by the USSR Council of Ministers.  The results were staggering: barely more than one in ten decisions were implemented.’   The rejection of liberalism, de-centralisation, and the role of the market were essentially conservative prerogatives.  The Party’s increasing intervention did bear striking similarities to the command style dictatorship of the 1930s.  The suggestion that it is in someway meaningful to describe the Brezhnev regime as being essentially ‘neo-Stalinist’ sustains a degree of cogency, even after examination of the regime’s attempt at reforms.  Yet, a caveat should here be ascribed to ‘neo-Stalinist’; the Stalinism of the Brezhnev years was a ‘developed Stalinism’, it was a Stalinism that had accepted the weight of Khrushchëvschina and progressed itself beyond imitation.

Further reading:-
Edwin Bacon & Mark Sandle (eds.), Brezhnev Reconsidered, (London, 2002).
George W. Breslauer, Khrushchëv and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics, (London, 1982).
George Breslauer, ‘Reformism and Conservatism’, Discussion, Slavic Review, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Jun., 1979), pp. 216-219.
Archie Brown & Michael Kaser, The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchëv, 2nd edition,  (London, 1978).
Fedor Burlatsky, trs. Daphne Skillen, Khrushchëv and the First Russian Spring, (London, 1991).
Stephen F. Cohen, ‘The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union’, Discussion, Slavic Review, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Jun., 1979), pp. 187-202.
R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, (Basingstoke, 1989).
Michael Ellman & Vladimir Kontorovich, ‘The Collapse of the Soviet System and the Memoir Literature’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 49, No. 2. (Mar., 1997), pp. 259-279.
Harvey Fireside, ‘Dissident Visions of the USSR: Medvedev, Sakharov & Solzhenitsyn’, Polity, Vol. 22, No. 2. (Winter, 1989), pp. 213-229.
W. Fletcher ‘Religious Dissent in the Soviet Union in the 1960s’, Slavic Review, Vol.30, No.2. (1971), pp. 298-316.
Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente, (Cornell, 1984).
John Gooding, Socialism in Russia. Lenin and his Legacy, 1890-1991, (London, 2002).
Mikhail Gorbachev, tr. Georges Peronansky and Tatjana Varsavsky, Memoirs, (London, 1995).
Ken Jowitt, ‘Soviet Neotraditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3. (Jul., 1983), pp. 275-297.
Donald R. Kelley, Soviet Politics from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, (New York, 1987).
Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 2nd edition, (Cambridge, 2006).
Moshe Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates. From Bukharin to the Modern Reformers, (London, 1975).
Catherine Merridale, ‘Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 1, Redesigning the Past. (Jan., 2003), pp. 13-28.
James R. Millar, ‘The Little Deal: Brezhnev’s Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism’, Slavic Review, Vol.44, No.4 (1985), pp. 694-706.
Joel C. Moses, ‘Regionalism in Soviet Politics: Continuity as a Source of Change, 1953-1982’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1985), pp. 184-211.
James G. Richter, Khrushchëv ’s Double Bind. International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics, (Baltimore, 1994)
Abraham Rothberg, The Heirs of Stalin: Dissidence and the Soviet Regime, 1953-1970, (London, 1972).
Robert Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, (London, 1997)
Hedrick Smith, The Russians, (London, 1976).
Jonathan Steele, World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy under Brezhnev and Andropov, (London, 1983).
Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, (Oxford, 2003).
William Taubman, Khrushchëv: The Man and his Era, (London: Free Press, 2005).
William J. Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, (London, 2003).
William J. Tompson, ‘The Fall of Nikita Khrushchëv’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 6. (1991), pp. 1101-1121.

Decolonization and National Character

The decline of national identity since the Second World War, as protuberantly probed by Richard Weight, highlights important developments in political, cultural, and national identification in Britain. [Cf. Richard Weight, Patriots – National Identity in Britain 1940-2000, (London, 2002).] By the closing years of Weight’s sprawling investigation, he highlights the Conservative government’s 1995 attempted re-creation of post-war patriotism for the fiftieth anniversary of ‘Victory in Europe’. The failure of this attempt, although somewhat precluded by the thrust of Weight’s thesis of declining British national identity, highlights the general disintegration of a concept of ‘British’ identity in the period from the Second World War to the end of the twentieth-century. There were a number of challenges to the entrenched cultural establishments in the immediate post-war years that require attention in addressing the above question. At a time when patriotism and social cohesion were seemingly at their (modern) zenith, it is essential to acknowledge Orwell’s recognition of the internal structural tensions within the union and the potential for radical revision within those increasingly strained relationships. It is interesting that at a time when challenges were being posed to the union, the attention of the government was focussed elsewhere, most pertinently for this enquiry, upon wide-ranging reassessments of the question of ‘Empire’. The widespread dismantling of the British Empire in the decades following the Second World War, whether dramatically ‘implosive’ or a continuation of longer processes, begs questions of the effect on British national identity that such a change brought. Established commentary asserts a thesis of ‘minimal impact’ due to the waning of imperial identity within British culture. [Cf. Stuart Ward (ed.), British culture and the end of empire, (Manchester, 2001).] But then, recent observers now maintain this as not the case. As liberal notions came to directly challenge established justifications for imperialism, the strongest external prop to the British national character became dangerously unbalanced and directly challenged that character.

However, before continuing, I am required to do a spot of preparation by means of discussion of one singularly important point: the general attitude towards Empire and decolonization during post-war reconstruction. By discussing this at the outset, a canvass for the remainder of the discussion will be established. Nonetheless, the following analysis is essentially contingent upon one fundamental definition: that of ‘national character’. This potentially deeply subjective concept should be regarded, at least in the following, as the identification of communal bond within a national context. It may also be worthwhile defining one other problematic concept at this point: citizenship. In what follows ‘citizenship’ (where mentioned) will be defined in its most elementary form as membership of a political unit or culture.

The established historical view states that decolonization failed to impact significantly on British society or culture. Perhaps due to the insularity of decolonization questions in contemporary political culture, there has been a general historical tendency to accept the loss of, or withdrawal from, empire as relatively unimportant. Alternatively, accepting that ‘imperialism’ is often referred to in an almost pejorative voice, the desire to ignore possibly negative or unpopular concerns this loss or withdrawal effected on the British national character is a logical, though subjective response. The retreat from far-flung territories has been morally justified on these terms and remain distant from current politics and tend to be lauded for the efficacy with which the process was effected. This efficacy, almost a distinctively ‘British’ decency, is reflected in the observation of one member of the British public when they note in their diary: ‘The next thing our Government will want to do is give up the Rock of Gibraltar to Spain, if she asks for it nicely.’ Not only does this (annoyingly hyperbolic) observation show the perceived decency of the transactions, it also elucidates rather accurately an implicit contempt for a possible replacement of the Empire: re-alignment with continental Europe. Concurrent intentions to withdraw from Empire and, at the same time, Macmillan’s attempts to place Britain into the heart of a mainland European confederation with ‘defeated’ nations, in many ways, drew wide attention away from the former to the latter … until de Gaulle stepped in the way! Having said this, the above thesis of ‘minimal impact’ was based upon potentially misleading and deficient evidence, referring to the British public’s widespread inability to name a colony or differentiate between colonies and dominions. Citing the public’s general indifference to imperial matters when they were current, the conclusion is reached that decolonization was met with the same inattention and apathy.

Yet, there remains something viable in this ‘evidence’. Asides from the threat of the ‘Europeanisation’ of ‘Britishness’ to detract attention from the death-throws of imperialism, there was Americanisation of culture and a particularly American brand of affluence in Britain. If there were lamentations for a declining imperial prestige, then it is not difficult to suggest that a newfound ‘retail therapy’ would have the ability to placate or, again, redirect such imperial pessimism into the attractive consumerism and ‘age of affluence’. This ‘age’ should be understood as particularly vibrant against the preceding austerity of the war-years and those of the immediate aftermath given Macmillan’s almost accusatory ‘you’ve never had it so good.’

A profound psychological shift accompanied this ‘age of affluence’ that disengaged the younger generation from the concerns of the older. A shortage of labour tipped the scales in favour of the employee bringing higher wages, better working conditions and, for the first time, widespread disposable income. Between 1951 and 1974 real incomes doubled in value with only between 1% and 3% of the workforce claiming benefits at any time, fulfilling Beveridge’s definition of ‘full-employment’. [Figures taken from Weight.] Further to this, the installation of the welfare state and the levelling effect that such universal rights brought re-focussed attention away from notions of decline and highlighted benefits and positive aspects of the post-war world. The combined benefit of affluence and the welfare state changed the social expectations of the working class, although this failed to transcend the existing class structure, and strengthened concepts of citizenship and individualism. At the same time, a castigation of the traditionalist world of the pre-war years was replaced by the permissive society of the late 1950s onwards.

Within all of these significantly determining transmutations in British society, and by extension, British culture and national identity, there remain two key themes: modernisation and individualism. Modernisation was, more than anything else, highlighted by the government as the way forward. The Festival of Britain in 1952 utilised a distinctively modern national image. Individualism can be found most explicitly in the ‘Angry Young Men’, or Gaitskell’s charge of the decline of community consciousness. Individualism can be found in the army of rockers disturbing cinemas across the country in 1956. It stands then that the withdrawal from a nineteenth-century collective mechanism (such that imperialism was) would likely have few significant consequences for British culture. The eagerness for the rejection of the past and the traditional structures of the power elite, although not fiercely pursued by Attlee’s socialist government as was expected, was greeted with a degree of insensibility by a population increasingly socialist in character, increasingly individualist in construction, and increasingly modern in their aspirations.

Consequently, the evidence on which the thesis of ‘minimal impact’ is based, although shaky and largely circumstantial at best, does have a social, economic and cultural basis that is able to provide something of a concrete foundation for such aspersions. Yet, in undermining such theories, we are able to turn to other such ‘concrete’ foundations. It would be most inappropriate to suggest that one side of the argument was entirely right and the other equally wrong, it must stand that decolonization did affect British society, and by extension national character, to some extent for, regardless of the availability of any evidence, the relationship between mother-country and colonies/dominions must remain purely reciprocal in nature. Such a relationship entails that decolonization would affect British society.

There were political worries over the Indian independence. The problem for the Attlee government was a fear that the issue would undermine their electoral chances in the next election. Given that Attlee’s focus was ultimately on Indian independence, the Labour government were fearful that this move would be seen ‘as the beginning of the liquidation of the British Empire’. Macmillan’s concern was similarly that of the loss of public support. Thus political concerns over popular support suggest the tenuous nature of the loss of empire and the potential for reaction that electoral politics remain invariably apprehensive about. Nonetheless, such political abstractions and, what amount to no more than fears, do not necessarily translate into realities. Worthy of note, however, is the role of political consensus, whether myth or reality, in the years 1945-56. The attitude of the Conservatives in adopting a continuation of the decolonization process, and the general agreement between the two main parties over the process, entailed that the issue was never seriously criticised in the political press. This consensus only collapsed with the advent of the Suez crisis and Eden’s anti-appeasing hawkishness. What is particularly relevant about the Suez crisis is that it was the first explicit challenge to the irrelevancy of decolonization. Eden’s weeklong-armed escapade demonstrated that Britain was no longer capable of logistically difficult sea-borne operations and so the absence of the Empire was fully noticeable. Labour’s explicit condemnation of the adventure ended consensus.

On the above then, it would appear straightforward that the process of decolonization affected the public opinion in no great degree. The opposing view sees the good nature and general equanimity of the process as ‘a self-justificatory and consolatory travesty’; simply, right-wing propaganda. The fact that the process was, to all intents and purposes, initiated by the left within the scope of broad political consensus, makes this charge somewhat questionable. It is now essential to turn attention towards the specific issue of the British ‘national character’.

Recent historical explorations of popular narratives of ‘nation’ and ‘empire’ in the British media follows such narratives as told through movie and televisual representations from the War to Churchill's funeral in 1965. Three conflicting narratives are outlined: Britishness as a global identity maintained by means of a ‘white’ Commonwealth; Britishness as a domestic identity under siege from colonial wars and immigration (ultimately showing ‘little England’ as being threatened by empire); and thirdly, the revised history of national greatness that celebrated the heroic masculinity of British wartime activity that places greater and greater emphasis on the role of the British as heroes whilst gradually displacing the actions of the imperial collective. [Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire 1939-1965, (Oxford, 2005).]

The displacement of ‘Empire Day’ from popular culture highlights the idea that Britishness, as a global identity, could be maintained by means of projecting and promoting a ‘white’ Commonwealth in place of ‘empire’, thus showing the changing demands made upon popular culture. At the same time, attempts were made to promote ‘Commonwealth’ as a unifying feature of Britishness in place of ‘empire’. However, the institution of ‘Commonwealth Week’ in 1959 failed to impact on British culture and the idea was dropped in 1962. Where the idea of Commonwealth was successful was in its implicit racial aspersions. The acceptance of a ‘white’ Commonwealth was a stark contrast to a racially rich empire. The Commonwealth highlighted a racial kinship as an attempt to foster an insular national identity. Britishness as a domestic identity under siege from colonial wars and immigration ultimately demonstrated that a multi-racial empire threatened ‘little England’. Although the levels of immigration remained low enough that claims of a siege or invasion from ‘racially inferior’ immigrants are easily rebutted, campaigns to keep Britain ‘white’ and racism were sparked through media representations that may, as Webster intimates, be forms of reaction to decolonization. The retreat from imperialism and a general distaste and distrust for the continent revised history of national greatness that celebrated the heroic masculinity of British wartime activity that places greater and greater emphasis on the role of British as heroes whilst gradually displacing the actions of the imperial collective. Worth noting, as Webster does not, these narratives, whilst expressly focussing upon empire, are only three amongst a possible indeterminate number of narratives of post-war Britain focussing on themes other than empire. So, the impact of these narratives and their diffusion remain ill defined.

What does remain is the general closing of the British national character to exclude non-whites. As Robert Miles points out, this radicalization of national identity suggests that this dialectical representation of inclusion and exclusion result in Otherness. [Robert Miles, Racism, (London, 1989).] The resulting process defines the British national character by those who do not belong or share those same characteristics rather than by criteria of those that do. As Britain ceased to be ‘father of an empire’, the role of women undertook a similar transmutation from ‘mother’ to ‘guardian of the home’. This ‘outward’ looking, defensive rather than a ‘downward’ looking, maternalistic role signifies the watchfulness for external threats suggesting realignment from imperial to post-imperial status within the British national character.

There clearly remains an imprecision about much of the scholarship challenging the ‘minimal impact thesis’ that fails to convincingly persuade that any significant proportion of the population inculcated any sense of changing national character directly determined by decolonization. This is not to contest changing national narratives, increasing racism, or a psychological ‘closing’ of national identity, as it would appear that these experiences did occur. However, there would appear to be only very tenuous possibilities that these experiences were directly influenced by and solely by, decolonization and the decline in imperial prestige that hindsight suggests. Amongst all the other transformations that were inflicted on British society in the immediate post-war decades, it remains that the process of decolonization was but one – and an altogether secondary one at that.

Machiavelli's intentions with The Prince.

Nicolò Machiavelli is, to all intents and purposes, a self-contained paradox. History has cast him at once as the father of modern political science … of heroic morality … of radical, critical, naturalistic humanism … of modern Italian Nationalism … but also the teacher of despotism, and terrorism … he was atheist, realist, positivist, proto-Jesuit, existentialist, pragmatist, proto-Marxist. The list goes on … and on and the question of ‘who’ or ‘what’ Machiavelli was becomes ever more meiotically effervescent. Many, if not most of the epithets attached to ‘Machiavelli’ are loose at best and often consummately apocryphal. However, there is every likelihood that the author of the political Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, the comic play, The Mandrake, and the brilliant but tainted Florentine Histories would most likely have been forgotten by history had it not been for the widespread appeal of one little book. Without The Prince it might even be said that Machiavelli’s name would have all but disappeared – except, perhaps, from the somewhat strabismic view of the student of Renaissance Italian politics or poetry.

I doubt very much that there is need here to outline Machiavelli’s life or the rather well-known events surrounding the composition of The Prince. However, convention stipulates that some minor lip-service need be paid to these aspects of the book.

Machiavelli was born in Florence on 3 May, 1469. In his late teens, he attended lectures by Marcello Virgilio Adriani (the distinguished humanist and Florentine politician) and was then, in the 1490s, much impressed by the ‘unarmed prophet’, Savonarolla. It was on the violent demise of this latter figure that Machiavelli rose to prominence in Florentine politics being confirmed in 1498 as the second chancellor of the Republic, elected secretary to the Ten of War. By November of that year he was considered proficient enough to be sent on his first diplomatic mission on behalf of the Ten of War. This was to Piombino in Livorna. Over the next fourteen years, Machiavelli would be sent on diplomatic missions the length and breadth of Italy whereby he met nearly all the important figures of the day. Additionally, he made four missions to the French court of Louis XII and one to the court of the Emperor Maximillian. Thus, Machiavelli was, as far as is discernible, a competent diplomat able to be entrusted with the most important of missions.

In 1512, Spanish troops invaded Florentine territory. Having been responsible for the raising and training of a militia, Machiavelli was deeply embarrassed by the fact that the Florentine militia simply ran away from the army of Cardinal de’ Medici. This opened the doors for the ruthless sack of Prato. In Florence, news of the sack turned many a citizen to advocate surrender. Medici supporters fell upon the Pallazzo della Signoria and demanded the resignation of Gonfaloniere Soderini. Machiavelli’s final official task was to carry Soderini’s official surrender to Cardinal de’ Medici. On 1 September, 1512, the Medici were restored to power in Florence.

Somewhat correctly, Machiavelli was seen as one of Soderini’s closest supporters and was thus tainted and stripped of office, deprived of his citizenship and fined 1,000 florins (entailing near bankruptcy). He was banished from the city and retired to a smallholding several miles to the south. His reputation and career were ruined. But, as so often happens, [I]fortune [/I]turned against Machiavelli and his bad situation got worse. In early 1513, an anti-Medici plot was uncovered in Florence that dragged Machiavelli back to the centre of controversy. Whilst there is no evidence that Machiavelli was complicit in the plot, he was nonetheless arrested, gaoled and tortured.

Machiavelli was subjected to six 'drops' of the strappado without 'confession'.

Our seemingly forsaken author remained languishing in gaol until being released upon the timely death of Julius II. Cardinal de’ Medici was elected Pope and took the name Leo X (after the Lion of Florence). Machiavelli was released as part of a general amnesty and left to furtively make his way home to rebuild his life. It was in this state of extreme disrepair that he sat down to write The Prince.

The Prince cannot be understood without a measure of understanding of its wider context. The political situation in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century was a complex one. To sum up the situation in one word, ‘disarray’ would be a good candidate. Essentially, the four biggest states, Milan, Venice, Naples, Florence and the papacy dominated affairs. Each of these powers were perpetually seeking to either extend their territory or defend against their perfidious neighbours. Intrigue, fragile alliance and outright treachery were standard political tools. For instance, in the early 1490s, Florence had an alliance of sorts with Milan, watched Venice with trepidation and suspected the Borgia pope (Alexander VI). These suspicions of the pope were largely justified: Alexander VI held ambitious plans for the extension of Roman (not Papal) territory by means of conquering the Romagna (previously part of the papal lands) – a move that both Florence and Venice viewed as threatening.

This segmented, disparate collection of city-states made Italy as a whole in a particularly weak and vulnerable state. To the north, behind that forbidding Alpine partition lay France, the most powerful state in Europe. Across the Mediterranean to the west lay a Spain with an eye on Naples. To the east, the Ottomans were sweeping through the Balkans. It is hardly surprising that the larger Italian states, whilst dominating the smaller Italian states, also looked for alliance with larger foreign powers. Italian politics were complicated.

In 1494, two years after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy to take up the Angevin claim to Naples and so sparking nearly sixty-five years of intermittent warfare within the peninsula. On the approach of the French army, the new Medici ruler of Florence, Piero ‘the unfortunate’ de’ Medici, did everything he could to hasten Charles’ movement through Tuscany by capitulating and ceding fortresses and paying sums of money to the French. Having upset many of the more influential Florentines before going to meet Charles, he found himself ousted from power. Medici rule in Florence was at an end.

But this end did not materialise purely from the weakness of the Medici or from the appearance of the French. The power of the Medici was dealt a severe blow by an ‘unarmed prophet’ in the shape of the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola. Having been afflicted by a series of bad harvests, foreign threats and epidemics, the Florentines found themselves very receptive to Savonarola’s firebrand, Jeremiad style. It was time to repent after the years of lavish Medicean illuminations and Savonarola was very able in organising such displays of contrition that culminated in the ‘bonfire of vanities’ in 1497. This particular display of self-mortification was probably a step too far for the city so well acquainted with conspicuous consumption. When Savonarola attacked the Church, the Borgia pope found it prudent to engineer his downfall and organise for him a personal bonfire Piazza della Signoria. Machiavelli watched, and learned. Then, probably with the quiet sponsorship of the Pierfrancesco branch of the Medicis, Machiavelli was elected secretary of The Ten of War.

But the complex political world of the Italian peninsula remained.

When it is evening, I return home from the inn and retire to my study. Before entering I take off my everyday clothes … and go through the ritual of donning my robes of state. Thus fitted out in appropriate dress, I enter the venerable courts of the ancients, where they kindly receive me.

Besides political context, The Prince requires a measure of cultural context as well. Machiavelli makes good use of the dual concept of Fortuna and Virtus. The concepts are derived from ancient Roman thought. Fortuna was originally a Roman goddess, the bona dea, the good goddess. She was generally considered a malign power, though unpredictable and capricious … because she was a woman. She was often depicted with a cornucopia that signified a source of wealth, steering a ship as she steered lives, and on a ball or a wheel to indicate the randomness and unpredictability with which she might play the ultimate card in a person’s life. Virtus, on the other hand, derives from the Latin word vir meaning ‘man’, and thus depicts true manliness, masculinity, strength and energy. It is this typically Roman understanding of the term that Machiavelli seems to have adopted in The Prince rather than the Christian understanding (from which we get ‘virtue’). The conflict between virtus and fortuna was limited on account of her being immortal and he being not. That being the case, he could not control her actions. Stoic ideas suggest that through virtus man should withdraw importance of actions of fortune rather than try to determine them. Machiavelli’s use of the concepts would surely be something worth discussing below.

But such a discussion ties in nicely with another potential debate: how does The Prince (or indeed, Machiavelli) deal with Christianity? Clearly our intrepid time-travelling author found much to admire in the ancients. What was his relationship with the Christian Church?

Was there an ulterior motive?

The Prince is, on some accounts, directly oppositional to all of Machiavelli’s other works and contradicts his propositions of free state-hood and republicanism. Other accounts maintain that The Prince parodies the concept of advice books for princes that had evolved during the previous centuries into an 'enormously popular' form, The Prince parodied and mocked the concept 'like a political Black Mass'. Alternatively, that The Prince is a polemical work addressing the temporal power of the papacy. Further more, of the many other possible explanations of the work, one other is worth close consideration, that The Prince is a direct and pragmatic response to the ills that were racking the Italian peninsular in the early sixteenth-century. Be this as it may, I think that whichever theoretical explanation you find more appealing, it remains essential that Machiavelli’s little advice book is understood within the contemporaneous political atmosphere. What is clear and distinct is, however, that The Prince was addressed specifically to potential tyrants. So, taken at face value, Machiavelli’s 'little book' is quite explicitly an advice book for tyrants – this would not have been unnoticed by contemporary readers.

As if the aspersion of ‘tyrant’ was not explicit enough, Machiavelli applies the example of Cesare Borgia as a man of virtus and so a model of ideal princely behaviour to be aspired to. Son of a pope and installed by a foreign power, Borgia held a striking resemblance to Guiliano de’ Medici. As the Medici came from an illustrious Florentine family where three generations had been proclaimed as ‘first citizen of the republic’, somewhat astonishingly, a Medici prince was now being advised to follow the model of a Spanish bastard. And this particular bastard was widely held guilty of the crimes of fratricide, incest, and other crimes (as if the first two were not significant enough); who was deeply hated in Tuscany for his military conduct; and most astonishingly, as a prince who was perhaps one of the most spectacular failures in ‘Italian’ history. Of all these facts, Machiavelli was more conversant than most. His diplomatic papers reveal a degree of contempt, or revilement, for the tyrant. Whilst many recent studies have painted the Borgias in pastilles as a stabilising force, Machiavelli, and by extension the rest of the peninsula, would not have been so benevolent to the Borgia memory. At the time Machiavelli wrote The Prince, Cesare Borgia was simply detested. Its very much worthwhile asking Why did Machiavelli falsify historical events?

Historian Garrett Mattingly insists that because of all these enigmas within The Prince, the work is a satire. By using the downfall of the Borgia prince as an example, Machiavelli effectively warns Guiliano de’Medici that without his brother, Pope Leo X’s support, his position, like that of Cesare’s is precarious. In chapter VII of The Prince, the Medici readers are advised that Cesare shouldn’t have allowed the election of Julius II as he was supported by the French – instead, Cesare should have installed a pope who would have been backed by the Spanish as a means of reinforcing his own power. Yet, the Medici were backed by the French and Julius II. In a way, without Julius, Leo X would possibly not have been. So why would Machiavelli attempt to curry the favour of the Medici by criticising those very people who had placed the Medici in power, and without whom they would not have been able to maintain this power? If, as Mattingly suggests, The Prince is viewed as a satire, then all these enigmas iron themselves out. Mattingly also suggests that the work was never presented to the Medici as there is no trace of it.

Other historians have suggested that The Prince is an attempt at encouraging the Medici to rid the peninsula of the papacy and bring about a solution to the divisions and vulnerabilities that Machiavelli is aware of. Cesare, as unlikely a protagonist as he his, highlights the effects of his having failed to act efficiently enough and ridding Italy of the papacy and the College of Cardinals. Machiavelli’s solution to a divided Italy, is to highlight the vulnerability of the church’s position and suggest that a strong prince might act where Cesare had shied away.

Mary Dietz has suggested that The Prince is an extravagant trap. Machiavelli is enticing the Medici prince to act in a way that is profligate and unpopular and would thus destroy their rule allowing for the rise of a republic that is possibly in line with his republican ideals. In this scenario, The Prince is a prequel to The Discourses – entice the tyrannous prince into undermining the despotic state and then establish this kind of republic. But then, The Prince – short as it is – is a rather densely packed document. It deals with ecclesiastic matters, internal state security, and foreign policy amongst others. It does seem rather implausible that Machiavelli would write such an elaborate trap that is, to all intents and purposes, strangely instructive. This fact brings us back to the most general assumption that the ‘little book’ is indeed what it says it is: an advice book for princes.

So, where does that leave us? Well that’s still wide open to debate; this ‘little book’, this most notorious of ‘little books’ throws up so many potential talking points. How many can we find?






Bibliography - 
Machiavelli, N., 2003, The Prince, trans, Bull, G., Penguin Classics.

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