Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia questions and answers

The case for internal collapse rests on real evidence: domains and samurai sank into debt, peasant protests grew more frequent after 1750, famines killed hundreds of thousands, and Ōshio’s rising showed discontent inside the ruling class itself. Marxist historians in Japan long argued that feudalism was decaying from within. The case for resilience is also strong, because no lord challenged the shogun for 250 years, the economy grew, and the order survived every famine and protest it faced. Most historians, including Marius Jansen and Conrad Totman, now treat the internal strains as the cause of vulnerability and the foreign threat as the trigger. The strains decided how badly the system would handle a shock, and the shock decided when it would have to. The same question returns in this atlas’s second half, where historians argue whether the Soviet system was dying in 1985 or was killed by the attempt to reform it. The transferable lesson is that old orders rarely fall from internal weakness alone, yet internal weakness determines how hard they fall when pressure arrives from outside.

READ CHAPTER 1 — Tokugawa shogunate and sakoku →

The economic case is substantial: fixed tariffs denied the government customs revenue and protection for new industries until 1911, the gold drain and export boom drove inflation, and extraterritoriality placed foreigners beyond Japanese law. Yet the economic losses were manageable compared with China’s, and trade also brought new wealth to silk districts and merchants. The political consequences were larger and faster. Signing without the emperor’s approval made the shogunate look disloyal, the purge that followed made enemies of the most capable lords, and within ten years the shogunate was gone. Historians such as W. G. Beasley therefore see the treaties above all as a political catalyst, whose economic harm was real yet manageable. The economic terms framed Meiji Japan’s long campaign for equality, while the political crisis decided who would wage it. The lesson that transfers is that a government’s concessions to outside pressure can do their greatest damage to the belief that it has the right to rule.

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

Ideas mattered because they supplied legitimacy: the cult of the emperor allowed a few domains to present a seizure of power as loyalty, and it made other lords reluctant to fight the imperial banner. Guns and organisation decided the battles of 1866 and 1868, where Chōshū’s mixed-class infantry and Satsuma’s modern equipment beat larger forces. The shogunate’s mistakes opened the door, from Ii’s treaty without imperial approval to the failed expedition of 1866. Historians weight these differently: Marxists stressed social forces, Beasley the ambitions of lower samurai, Totman the shogunate’s own reforms and errors. A strong answer argues that ideas made the challenge legitimate, the shogunate’s weakness made it possible, and military organisation made it succeed, and that without any one of the three the outcome would have been different. The transferable insight is that old regimes usually fall when a rival can claim a higher legitimacy and also field a force willing to act on the claim.

READ CHAPTER 3 — Meiji Restoration and Boshin War →

The leaders bought out the most powerful losers: the lords received debt relief, titles and incomes, and the samurai kept their stipends long enough for the change to settle. They used the emperor’s authority to make resistance look disloyal, they acted quickly and in unity, and a credible army stood behind each step. Many domains were also bankrupt, so abolition relieved more than it robbed. Yet the revolution was far from costless. Thousands died in the samurai revolts and perhaps 12,000 or more in the Satsuma Rebellion alone, and peasants paid in riots, conscription and taxes that historians such as Stephen Vlastos have documented. A strong answer weighs these costs against the speed and scale of the change, and it notes that the costs fell on those who could not bargain. The transferable lesson is that transitions go most smoothly when the powerful are compensated, and that the price is usually shifted onto those without that bargaining power.

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

The case that it prevented democracy is strong: it was granted from above without any assembly’s approval, it made the emperor sovereign and ministers answerable to him, it gave the vote to about 1% of the population, and its clause on supreme command let the army escape civilian control in the 1930s. Yet the case that it advanced democracy is also real. The control that the Diet, Japan’s new parliament, held over new budgets gave elected politicians leverage, the oligarchs had to bargain with parties within a decade, and the electorate grew until all men could vote in 1925. Historians such as Carol Gluck show that the same document supported both an ideology of obedience and a lively public politics. A good answer argues that the constitution was designed to contain participation and that, once participation had legal channels, it grew beyond its designers’ intentions. The lesson that transfers is that institutions created to limit change can become the means by which later generations demand more of it.

READ CHAPTER 5 — Meiji Constitution and modernisation →

Measured against its founders’ goals, the transition succeeded: Japan had kept its independence, ended the unequal treaties, built industry, railways and schools, created a constitution and defeated China and Russia. Modernisation theorists of the 1960s, such as Edwin Reischauer, presented it as the model of a peaceful, well-managed transformation. Later historians, including John Dower and Carol Gluck, stressed who paid: 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 back to choices made in this period. A strong answer separates the success of the state from the experience of the people it ruled and conquered, and it judges each against evidence. The transferable insight is that a transition can succeed brilliantly at making a state strong while shifting much of its cost onto people who had no voice in it.

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

The case for doom rests on structural evidence: growth near zero by some estimates, dependence on oil prices and grain imports, a costly empire and an ageing elite unable to innovate. Yegor Gaidar argued that the collapse of oil prices made a crisis unavoidable. The case against doom is also serious. Stephen Kotkin and others note that the Soviet Union in 1985 faced no revolt, no war it was losing on its own territory and no bankruptcy, and that a poorly performing system can survive for decades, as North Korea’s has. China after 1978 showed one alternative, opening agriculture and small business to markets while keeping the party’s monopoly of power. A strong answer distinguishes decline from collapse: the Soviet system was declining, but collapse required a trigger and a set of choices, which the next chapters examine. The transferable insight is that weak performance makes reform necessary, and the way reform is carried out decides whether a system survives it.

READ CHAPTER 7 — Brezhnev and the Era of Stagnation →

Judged by his own goals, Gorbachev failed: he wanted a reformed, more productive socialism within a renewed Union, and by 1991 the economy was in free fall and the Union had dissolved. His economic measures, from the vodka campaign to the enterprise law, made shortages and deficits worse. Yet historians such as Archie Brown and William Taubman stress that he refused to use mass force to keep power at home or in Eastern Europe, accepted competitive elections and ended the Cold War. The episodes of violence in Tbilisi in 1989 and Vilnius in 1991 show both that force was used and that it was not pursued to the end. A strong answer separates intention from outcome and economics from politics, and weighs what alternative leaders might realistically have done. Many conclude that he was a failed economic reformer and a remarkable political one. The transferable lesson is that a leader’s refusal to use force can decide the character of a transition as much as any policy.

READ CHAPTER 8 — Perestroika and glasnost →

The case for the borderlands is clear in the sequence of events: the Baltic popular fronts, the Karabakh crisis and Georgian protests opened the question of secession, Lithuania declared independence first, and Ukraine’s 90% vote made a Union without it impossible. Mark Beissinger shows how these mobilisations built on each other. The case for the centre is equally strong. Russia’s declaration of sovereignty, its withholding of taxes, Yeltsin’s defeat of the coup and his initiative at Belavezha ended the Union, and Central Asian leaders were left with independence they had barely sought. Serhii Plokhy stresses the decisive role of Russia and Ukraine together. A good answer argues that the borderlands made the crisis and the centre decided its outcome, and it explains why Russia’s elite saw more to gain from leaving than from ruling. The transferable insight is that empires often end when their core decides that the costs of holding the periphery are no longer worth paying.

READ CHAPTER 9 — Collapse of the Soviet Union →

Critics such as Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski argue that freeing prices and selling assets before building institutions caused hyperinflation, theft and a fall in output deeper than the Great Depression in America. Defenders such as Anders Åslund and Yegor Gaidar reply that the Soviet economy was already collapsing by 1991, with empty shops, no reserves and a budget financed by printing money, and that the breakup of the Union broke supply chains no policy could have saved. Some argue that Russia’s reforms were too timid, since inflation continued because the central bank kept printing money. Comparisons cut both ways: Poland’s rapid reforms worked better, while China’s gradualism worked in a very different society. A strong answer distinguishes the collapse that Russia inherited from the way its costs were distributed, and it asks who decided that distribution. The transferable insight is that markets become fair only when the institutions that govern them already exist, however fast or slowly the change is made.

READ CHAPTER 10 — Shock therapy in Russia →

The case that weak institutions produced the oligarchs is strong: courts could not enforce contracts, the tax service could not collect revenue, and a government desperate for money and votes traded assets for loans and support, so the oligarchs were filling a vacuum. The case that they deepened the weakness is also strong. Once they owned media, banks and natural resources, they lobbied for tax exemptions, captured regulators and used their channels to shape elections, which kept the state weak. Writers such as the journalist David Hoffman and the political scientist Daniel Treisman describe a cycle in which each fed the other. A strong answer explains the mechanism of that cycle with evidence, such as loans-for-shares and the 1996 election, and asks why it was broken only by a president who restored central power by curbing the media and the courts as well. The transferable insight is that markets built before the rule of law tend to create owners who prefer to keep the law weak.

READ CHAPTER 11 — Oligarchs and the First Chechen War →

By the measures its leaders chose, Meiji Japan succeeded more clearly: within forty years it ended the unequal treaties, built industry, schools and a constitution, and defeated two great powers. Russia in 2000 had lost an empire, seen output fall by about 40% and suffered millions of excess deaths. Yet the comparison needs to be made with care. Russia did create a market economy, private property and a decade of competitive elections, and it grew quickly after 1999, while Japan’s success rested on authoritarian institutions, cheap labour and colonial conquest, and its state slid into militarism. Criteria matter: success for a state differs from success for its people, its minorities or its neighbours. Historians such as Carol Gluck and Stephen Kotkin warn against judging transitions only by their end points. A strong answer compares leadership, sequencing, the international setting and the distribution of costs, and reaches a judgement that names its criteria. The transferable insight is that a transition’s success depends on who is asked, and the answer of those who paid deserves equal weight.

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