Suffering Victory

Suffering Victory recounts the commitment of Soviet liberal intellectuals to democratic transition during the effervescent period of perestroika and in the first years of post-Soviet Russia to the rise of Boris Yeltsin and the dissolution of the USSR. Guillaume Sauvé argues that late Soviet liberalism was mainly nourished by the legacy of humanistic socialism, combining Enlightenment ideals and Romantic aspirations, and concludes that the distinguishing feature is its assumed moralism.

After encouraging the concentration of power in the hands of the Russian president and an enlightened elite, liberal intellectuals undermined their own democratic project and were pushed aside from decision-making, while being rejected by most of the population for having supported a course of reforms that did not fulfill its promises. As Suffering Victory shows, the success of Russia's liberal intellectuals against the Communist Party came at the price of a decline deeper and more lasting than in most post-communist countries. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the fate of late Soviet liberals sheds crucial light on the prospects of liberal reforms in Russia today.

Guillaume Sauvé is a political scientist. His research focuses on Russia from the perspective of comparative politics and intellectual history. His main current project examines the dynamics of nondemocratic public debates through the study of petitions in Russia.

Suffering Victory provides an excellent and persuading account of a little-studied but important element of Russian-Soviet history.

James Krapfl, author of Revolution with a Human Face:

This brilliant study shows in gripping detail how the intelligentsia's thinking evolved in response to rapidly unfolding events. Guillaume Sauvé narrates a classic tragedy, whereby Russian liberals espoused a hubristic elitism that led them to understand 'democracy' as a moral force that could be embodied rather than a set of practices.