Max Weber and the Slavs: Two Studies

As the 100th anniversary of the death of Max Weber approaches in 2020, Weber's research on western Slavs (Poles) and eastern Slavs (Russians) could lead to charges of political incorrectness directed toward the German social scientist and followers of his works. Three modernist shibboleths - cultural relativism, the revolutionary character of the 20th century Russian revolutions and continuity on major issues between Marx and Engels - come in for a drubbing from Weber. In his studies of 1890s Polish agricultural labourers in Germany the sociologist demonstrated that higher and lower predispositions to economic productivity amongst various cultural groups were undeniable and that in some economic struggle contexts the lower-level groups did quite well against their adversaries, this to the detriment of global culture as a whole. On the Russian front Weber argued that the Russian Revolutions of the 20th century weren't particularly revolutionary and the same Oriental bureaucrats remained in the saddle during and after the Tsars, findings confirmed in the 20th century by Richard Pipes, who discovered pronounced continuity in bureaucratic personnel in Russia between 1914 and 1924. Quite inadvertently, Weber confirmed the immutability of Russian state policy proclaimed by Marx in 1867, this over and against Engels' revisionist 1890s contentions Russia was for practical purposes no longer any different from Western Europe.