Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia questions and answers

There is a strong case that the system had internal troubles. Samurai and domains accumulated debt, peasant protests became more frequent after 1750, famines killed hundreds of thousands, and Ōshio’s rising revealed discontent within the ruling class. Japanese Marxist historians long saw these as signs of feudalism decaying from within. Yet the order survived famine and protest, the economy grew, and for 250 years no lord challenged the shogun. Those facts also demand explanation. Marius Jansen and Conrad Totman are among the historians who distinguish vulnerability from the event that forced a response: internal strains weakened the system, while the foreign threat determined when it had to confront them. The Soviet half of this atlas raises a related question: was that system dying in 1985, or killed by the attempt to reform it? Internal weakness alone rarely brings down an old order, but it helps determine how severely an outside shock is felt.

READ CHAPTER 1 — Tokugawa shogunate and sakoku →

The treaties imposed serious economic costs. Fixed tariffs limited customs revenue and protection for new industries until 1911; the gold drain and export boom drove inflation; and extraterritoriality put foreigners beyond Japanese law. Yet Japan’s economic losses were manageable compared with China’s, and merchants and silk districts gained from trade. The political effects were faster and larger. The shogunate signed without imperial approval, making it appear disloyal to the authority in whose name it ruled. The ensuing purge turned some of the most capable lords into enemies, and within ten years the shogunate was gone. Historians such as W. G. Beasley therefore see the treaties above all as a political catalyst, while recognizing their real economic harm. Their terms set Meiji Japan on a long campaign for equality; the crisis helped decide who would lead that campaign. Outside pressure can weaken a government most sharply by damaging belief in its right to rule.

READ CHAPTER 2 — Black Ships and the opening of Japan →

Each explanation addresses a different part of the outcome. Imperial loyalty gave a small group of domains a claim to authority and made other lords reluctant to fight the banner. The shogunate’s errors, from Ii’s treaty without imperial approval to the failed 1866 expedition, gave the challenge an opening. Chōshū’s mixed-class infantry and Satsuma’s modern equipment helped turn that opening into victory over larger forces in 1866 and 1868. Historians give these elements different weight: Marxists stress social forces, Beasley lower samurai ambitions, and Totman the shogunate’s reforms and mistakes. A strong answer connects legitimacy, opportunity and organized force; without any one of them the outcome would have been different. The broader lesson is that a rival to an old regime needs both a claim to higher legitimacy and a force willing to act on it.

READ CHAPTER 3 — Meiji Restoration and Boshin War →

The leaders gave the strongest potential opponents a settlement they could accept. Lords received debt relief, titles and incomes; samurai stipends continued long enough for the first change to settle. Many domains were bankrupt, so losing authority also meant relief from obligations. The leaders acted quickly and together, used imperial authority to make resistance appear disloyal, and had an army capable of enforcing their decisions. But the transition was not bloodless. Thousands died in samurai revolts, perhaps 12,000 or more in the Satsuma Rebellion alone. Farmers faced taxes and conscription and protested, as Stephen Vlastos has documented. To judge the speed and scale of the change, we must also count these costs and ask who bore them. The powerful could bargain for compensation; much of the price fell on people who could not.

READ CHAPTER 4 — Early Meiji reforms (1868–77) →

The constitution’s designers wanted to contain participation. No assembly approved the document granted from above; the emperor was sovereign, ministers answered to him, and only about 1% of the population could vote. The supreme-command clause later helped the army escape civilian control in the 1930s. But the elected Diet could refuse new budgets. Its politicians acquired leverage, and within a decade the oligarchs had to bargain with parties. The electorate grew until all men could vote in 1925. As historians such as Carol Gluck show, the document supported an ideology of obedience alongside lively public politics. A channel intended to limit participation also gave later generations a way to demand more.

READ CHAPTER 5 — Meiji Constitution and modernisation →

By the founders’ own goals, the transition succeeded. Japan kept its independence, ended the unequal treaties, built industry, railways and schools, adopted a constitution and defeated China and Russia. In the 1960s modernization theorists such as Edwin Reischauer presented it as a peaceful, well-managed model. Later historians including John Dower and Carol Gluck asked who bore the costs: indebted farmers, girls in textile mills, the Ainu and Ryukyuans, and above all Taiwanese and Koreans whose lands were taken by force. Some also trace the military’s later independence and the wars of the 1930s to choices of this period. Both sides of the judgment need evidence. The state became strong, while much of the cost fell on people with no voice in it.

READ CHAPTER 6 — Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars →

The evidence for an unavoidable crisis is substantial. By some estimates growth was near zero; the Union depended on oil prices and imported grain, while an expensive empire and ageing elite added to its difficulties. Yegor Gaidar argued that the oil-price collapse made crisis unavoidable. But a crisis need not end in collapse. Stephen Kotkin and others note that in 1985 the Union faced no revolt, no war it was losing on its own territory and no bankruptcy. North Korea shows that a poorly performing system can survive for decades. China after 1978 suggests another possible reform: opening agriculture and small business to markets while retaining the party’s monopoly of power. Soviet decline was real, but collapse required a trigger and choices, which the next chapters examine. Weak performance creates pressure for reform; the way leaders undertake it helps determine whether the system survives.

READ CHAPTER 7 — Brezhnev and the Era of Stagnation →

Gorbachev did not achieve what he set out to do. He sought a more productive socialism in a renewed Union; by 1991 the economy was in free fall and the Union had dissolved. His vodka campaign and enterprise law made deficits and shortages worse. Yet the outcome of his political choices deserves separate consideration. Archie Brown and William Taubman stress his acceptance of competitive elections, his role in ending the Cold War and his refusal to use mass force to retain power at home or in Eastern Europe. Violence occurred in Tbilisi in 1989 and Vilnius in 1991, showing that force was used, though it was not pursued to the end. Judgment requires attention to his aims and results, to economics and politics, and to what alternative leaders could realistically have done. Many see a failed economic reformer and a remarkable political one. His refusal to use force helped determine the character of the transition.

READ CHAPTER 8 — Perestroika and glasnost →

The borderlands made secession a public question. Baltic popular fronts, the Karabakh crisis and Georgian protests opened the crisis; Lithuania declared independence first, and Ukraine’s vote of more than 90% made a Union without it impossible. Mark Beissinger shows how mobilizations encouraged later ones. But the Union also needed its core. Russia asserted sovereignty and withheld taxes; Yeltsin defeated the coup and took the initiative at Belavezha. Serhii Plokhy emphasizes Russia and Ukraine’s choices together, while many Central Asian leaders received independence they had scarcely sought. The borderlands began the crisis, but the core decided its outcome. Russia’s leaders saw more to gain by leaving than by sustaining the Union, illustrating how an empire can end when its core judges the periphery too costly to hold.

READ CHAPTER 9 — Collapse of the Soviet Union →

The crisis began before shock therapy. Anders Åslund and Yegor Gaidar point to empty shops, exhausted reserves and a budget financed by printing money in 1991; the Union’s breakup also severed supply chains that no policy could have saved. Some defenders argue that central-bank money creation prolonged inflation because reform was too timid. Critics including Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski hold that freeing prices and selling assets before institutions were built caused hyperinflation and theft amid an output fall deeper than America’s Great Depression. Poland’s rapid reforms worked better, while China’s gradual reforms took place in a very different society. A strong answer separates the collapse Russia inherited from decisions about who bore its costs, and asks who made those decisions. Markets need governing institutions if their outcomes are to be fair, whatever the speed of change.

READ CHAPTER 10 — Shock therapy in Russia →

Both directions matter. Weak courts, an ineffective tax service and a government desperate for money and votes created the opportunity: loans-for-shares exchanged assets for loans and political support. Once oligarchs controlled banks, natural resources and media, they could lobby for tax exemptions, capture regulators and shape elections through their television channels. The 1996 campaign shows how their resources could help determine who governed. David Hoffman and Daniel Treisman describe a cycle in which weak institutions enabled oligarchs and their influence deepened that weakness. A later president broke the cycle by restoring central power, while also curbing media and courts. The case suggests a wider danger: markets built before the rule of law can create owners with an interest in keeping it weak.

READ CHAPTER 11 — Oligarchs and the First Chechen War →

By their leaders’ chosen goals, the Meiji reformers succeeded more clearly: within forty years Japan ended the unequal treaties, built industry, schools and a constitution, and defeated two great powers. By 2000 Russia had lost an empire, output had fallen about 40%, and millions of excess deaths had occurred. But the comparison changes when we ask what people gained and lost. Russia created a market economy and private property, held competitive elections for a decade and grew quickly after 1999. Japan’s achievements rested on authoritarian institutions, cheap labor and colonial conquest, and its state slid into militarism. Carol Gluck and Stephen Kotkin warn against judging transitions only by their end points. A strong answer names its criteria, compares leadership, sequencing and the international setting, and gives weight to the people, minorities and neighbors who bore the costs.

READ CHAPTER 12 — Meiji and post-Soviet Russia compared →