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214 ReviewsA similar, albeit less radical, revisionism informs the article "The Russian MilitaryColonies, 1810-1831." In it Pipes argues quite convincingly that the notoriouscolonies of peasant-soldiers established by Alexander I and put under the control ofCount Arakcheev were not, as has often been claimed, merely an aspect of theemperor's reactionary turn after 1815, but in fact originated before the conflict withFrance as a plan for a rational and enlightened solution to the peasant question. Thisscheme failed not because of the cruel and oppressive manner with which it wasimplemented but because it was a telling illustration of the evil which results fromany social engineering that, disregarding their customs and mentalité, tries to forcepeople into happiness (or prosperity) as understood by the governing elites. Thisscholarly study illustrates the "liberal-conservative" stance that Professor Pipes hasdisplayed more recently in his scholarly and political activities.Pipes's own political beliefs may also be identified in his "Karamzin's Conceptionof the Monarchy," in which he analyzes the political philosophy of N. M.Karamzin, the well-known historian and author of Alexander I's time. In ProfessorPipes's view—which I find find quite persuasive upon rereading the article—Karamzin's idea of monarchy as the necessary foundation for Russia's greatness andprosperity was a combination of paternalistic, but essentially progressive, andmoderate conservative notions. While rejecting any effort at "rational constructivism"(to use von Hayek's felicitous phrase) and socioeconomic activism on the partof a bureaucracy, Karamzin was committed to a respect for tradition, for theindividual's free expression of opinion, and for freedom of action in the privatesphere, within the limits permitted by a benevolent law—a law safeguarded andapplied by the firm but benign authority vested in the person of the sovereign andlandlord. Naturally, such a political conception would hardly have proven adequatefor an industrializing and "modernizing" Russia in the late nineteenth century,but—applied conscientiously—it might have provided a workable guide during aperiod of transition and might have spared the country much sociopolitical turmoil.Pipes believes that the turmoil and suffering in the last decades of the imperialregime were in no small measure caused by an irresponsible intelligentsia reacting tothe imperial government's blindness to the country's many economic, social, andcultural problems. In studying the relationship between the state and the revolutionaryintelligentsia during his work on the two-volume biography of Peter Strove, ProfessorPipes had to clarify a semantic tangle and to account for Lenin's early politicaldevelopment. The article, "Narodnichestvo: A Semantic Inquiry," shows how theoriginal, rather vague signification of narodnik, "popular" in the sense of democratic,was turned by the early Russian Marxists into a polemically charged term todenounce those who saw in the peasantry and its institutions the point of departurefor a special, Russian way of avoiding capitalism and its socioeconomic consequences.Lenin, in turn, gave the word a dismissive edge in order to refuse any allianceor compromise with the peasantry or the liberal bourgeoisie. Closely tied to thissemantic investigation is the piece "The Origins of Bolshevism: Тле IntellectualEvolution of Young Lenin." This evolution took the future founder of the SovietUnion through populism (in its original democratic sense) to radical jacobinism andthe project of ruthlessly gaining control of a party in order to have complete power