(Dr. William Gleason, a Russian historian presently at Harvard'’s Ukrainian Research Institute, spent last fall teaching a course in St. Petersburg on the antecedents of civil society in Russia. CCSI asked for his reflections on that experience, and received the essay that follows. We thank Professor Gleason for his contribution and invite responses from readers , especially to the suggestion in the last paragraph.)

Is there historical precedent for the growth and emergence of a civil society in today's Russia, a growth characterized by thousands of voluntary organizations, a large private economy, a modern technology, and rapidly expanding ties to West-ern business? And, if so, do we need to re-examine the past in order to clarify that precedent; to ask, in other words , whether current manifestations of public identity and public association have deep roots that survived decades of communism and authoritarian ideology?

Last fall, at the invitation of the Department of Political History of St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity to explore these questions with a class of graduate students. I offered an eight-week course on the "Historical Roots of Civil Society Under the Tsars," a course which featured discussion of the explosion of voluntary organizations in pre-revolutionary Moscow and St. Petersburg, the work of the zemstvos, Russia's local self-governing councils, in bringing education and schools to milli ons of peasants, the maturation of the professional intelligentsia on the eve of World War I, and the rapid formation of political parties in the State Duma after the Revolution of 1905.

Students at St. Petersburg University were especially interested in the story of the role of the zemstvos in expanding literacy rates among the peasantry from 1864-1914. They also saw the relationship between strong political parties and a democratic culture, a conclusion dramatically heightened by the collapse of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow in October and by the decision of the Yeltsin Government to hold parliamentary elections in December 1993

. These events, and the willingness of the students to restudy the past because of obvious parallels between Russian society at the turn of the century and Russia today, suggest that an ongoing dialogue on the theme of civil society in Russian history would be fruitful. It would be important, in other words, to bring together Russian and American scholars who a re studying this issue--the historical roots of contemporary civil society--to share ideas and to propose agendas for continuing investigation and research. Perhaps an appropriate place to begin that process would be through the auspices of the Center fo r Civil Society International.

--William E. Gleason, Ph.D.
Harvard Ukrainian Research Center

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