Rationality and fatalism: meanings and labels in pre-revolutionary Russia
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Rationality and fatalism: meanings and labels in pre‑revolutionary Russia Daniel W. Bromley1 Received: 9 September 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Recent interest in the alleged rationality and fatalism of Russian peasants illustrates persistent tendencies to objectify certain social actors—and to assign normative labels to their vexing behavior. Sometimes those labels are demeaning. I call attention to this unpleasant tendency, and ask why some social actors attract our analytical interest, while other social actors escape such scrutiny. This disparity is particularly interesting when the two social actors are engaged in a setting where extractive power is present yet unnoticed. Keywords Russia · Extractive power · Peasant · Rationality · Fatalism A recent account in these pages seeks to assign labels to particular behaviors in prerevolutionary Russia (Howell and Wenzel, 2019). First, we are reassured that despite their “lack of education and political awareness, the peasants were rational in their refusal to participate in revolutionary activity; they engaged in a cost–benefit calculus which pushed them away from revolt and political organization.” Second, we learn that “…they believed they had no influence on the world, so it was not worth attempting to change it (p. 125).” Our interest in this work arises from the obvious relief to learn that humans can be rational even in the absence of an education, but especially in their complete innocence of political activism. This is reassuring since humans appear to have evolved over long millennia with a complete lack of both of these modernist conceits. How fortunate for us. Our interest in the Howell and Wenzel account is also piqued by their observation that since these surprisingly rational peasants were sure they could not affect the world, it was not worth their effort to try. This second sentiment was, apparently, not the result of rational thought (though the peasants were indeed rational and capable of such things). Nor was a cost–benefit analysis undertaken to assess the possible gains and losses from political activity. That step was * Daniel W. Bromley [email protected] 1
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
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apparently thought unnecessary. On the contrary, this second trait shared among the peasantry is advanced as evidence of a more defective flaw. Russian peasants were fatalists. There is more. We see from the title that they were also apathetic. On further reflection, it would seem that the two reasons advanced by Howell and Wenzel collapse into just one reason. Was it rational to be fatalistic? Or is fatalistic a good-enough label for the great unwashed? Perhaps what is in play here is good oldfashioned consequentialism—action-guiding reasons. In other words, is the attribution of fatalism merely a demeaning label easily affixed to some of our ancestors because we lack the imagination to search for plausible reasons? Th
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