The Armed Forces and Establishment of Secondary Social Institutes

Ivanov Andrei Alexandrovich ORCID: 0000-0003-4097-9447 Doctor of History Associate Professor; Department of Humanities; Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 196084, Russia, Moscow, Leningradsky ave., 51 ivanovaa85@list.ru Other publications by this author

The hypothesis of the study

In the twentieth century, the American anthropologist K. Wissler in the book "Man and Culture" outlined the idea of the existence of "cultural universals", which are typical aspects of the life of any community, regardless of habitat, population and other characteristics. He believed that each ethnocultural group, in order to stabilize internal and external relations, structures its life in accordance with a set of complexes such as speech, art, family, property, etc. At the same time, the researcher made a reservation that "it is practically impossible to make a satisfactory distinction between primitive and higher cultures, except for differences in complexity or richness of content" ^{[1, p. 78]}. It turned out that if there were common features – "universal cultural patterns" – for each nation, the content of these features could be different.

This thesis formed the basis of the hypothesis that institutional differences between states do not lie in the field of cultural universals, which formed the fundamental foundations of all traditional societies, but are determined by second-order structures that appeared on the basis of combinations of primary institutions (universals) influenced by different living conditions of ethnic groups, historical experience and individual innovations. Accordingly, overcoming the problem of dependence on the trajectory of previous development (modernization) of society is possible through the design of such new formations by connecting the structural elements of primary institutions with each other.

The concept of secondary institutions

Along with the fundamental institutions (army, family, industry, etc.), auxiliary (complementary) institutions function in society, which are secondary in nature to the basic institutions, and their task is to offset the disadvantages of geographical, climatic, demographic and other character characteristic of each territorial entity. Moreover, effectively designed "secondary" institutions are able to create a mechanism for transforming these shortcomings into drivers of socio-economic development.

This effect was also noticed by J. Vico, according to whom the presence of stable norms in society allows not only to minimize the negative consequences of the imperfection of human nature, but also to benefit from them, therefore, "out of ferocity, avarice and ambition" such institutions as "army, trade and court" are created ^{[2, p. 56]}. However, this idea was elaborated in more detail in the works of S.G. Kirdina-Chandler – from her point of view, the socio-economic success of a country often depends on the ability to introduce additional institutions that ensure the development of society without encroaching on the established institutional matrix, characterized by invariance to external influences ^[3]. To a certain extent, academician V.M. Polterovich supports this view, who believes that in order to carry out successful modernization, it is necessary to design special "intermediate" institutions that (even being suboptimal in their structure) ensure overcoming the blockages of socio-economic reforms through a kind of hybridization ^[4]. That is, modernization seems to be a phased endo-exogenous process, at each stage of which historically established institutions in a given society are gradually supplemented with elements of externally transplanted institutions, so that this combination does not meet resistance from elites, and allows ordinary citizens to progressively adapt to changes. One of the key problems in this context is the sustainability not so much of the internal normative or ideological features of the reformed institutions, but more of the models of interaction between them.

Accordingly, the success of a society over a long period of time can often be associated not so much with the internal structure of the state, the army, religion or production, but with the forms of contacts between these institutions – hybrid institutional agreements (civil-military, state-church, etc.). We can talk about the existence of at least three models of such contacts: cooperative, separative and confrontational, each of which has certain advantages and disadvantages in relation to the interaction of specific institutions within a single matrix. For example, P. de Coubertin, reviving the Olympic Games in the XIX century, not unreasonably defended the idea of the separative nature of the relationship between sports and politics. Such a model can be considered quite acceptable if it implies formal equality of social institutions and the rights of their members with the separate use of these rights and non–interference in each other's internal affairs - in other words, coexistence should proceed according to the principle of "Borromeo rings". In fact, the problem in implementing this model is social stratification, when formal non-interference is complemented by ranking institutions and groups by prestige and influence. This restricts the freedom of self-realization of individuals and contributes to the preservation of inequality, making it difficult to fully form an open access order. In addition, the interaction of institutions in a real historical situation rarely implies the possibility of implementing equal sanctions for violating the principle of non-interference. On the other hand, within the framework of the sociology of conflict, L. Kozer convincingly showed that confrontation is the most important factor of progress in public relations ^[5]. However, it should also be taken into account that conflicts between institutions can be accompanied by significant destruction, financial and demographic losses. For example, the discontent of the generals of the Spanish army with the results of the 1936 parliamentary elections (a symbolic victory was won by the Popular Front, which advocated reducing the number of officers) led to a coup and the beginning of a long Civil War.

Similarly, during the "cultural revolution" in China, the fight against revisionism against the background of the failure of the "Big Leap" was initially limited to repression against representatives of the intellectual minority (cultural institutions) – scientists, teachers, journalists, actors and writers, engineers, etc. In the history of Russia, such institutional confrontations are represented, for example, by the events of the second half of the XVII century, including the church "schism" and the Streltsy riots. In this context, the benefits of accelerating social development may be significantly lower than the long-term costs of disintegration. For example, the victory of the Moscow Prince Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 over the troops of temnik Mamai led to the destabilization of Russian-Horde relations. As a result, politically unmotivated Tatar raids on Russian principalities and the capture of their inhabitants for the purpose of selling them as slaves became regular. By the middle of the XVI century . Ivan IV had to introduce a special tax – "full–salary money" – for the redemption of such prisoners from the Tatars, which occupied about 3.5-4.8% of the total tax nomenclature of the Moscow Kingdom. Hence, probably, only a cooperative scenario is able to ensure the formation of effective secondary institutions over a long period of time. If we consider the economic component of social relations in this plane, then, in contrast to the point of view about the role of competition in the development and improvement of any system, we can put forward an argument about the importance of cooperation. In fact, it was precisely in the departure from the widespread use of the cooperative model of institutional interaction that P. Kozlowski saw one of the causes of crisis trends in modern society – for example, the divergence of labor and recreation standards, in his opinion, led to dysfunction between the hedonistic orientation of capitalist society and the nature of production based on strict work ethics and self-denial ^{[6, p 104]}.

Indeed, the study of the modernization experience in South Korea makes us pay attention to the role of "chaebols" (Samsung, Hyundai, Daewoo, etc.) – financial and industrial groups controlled by large clans, i.e., representing an alliance of family and business institutions supported by the state. Although in the West, running a family business often encounters the problem of informal relationships at work, which makes it difficult to apply sanctions to subordinate relatives, in Asia, as it turned out, such a symbiosis has long provided de-bureaucratization and better communication. In addition, the high quality of public-private partnership in the Japanese energy sector in the 1980s is often associated with the common interpretation of many concepts by the participants in the interaction. For example, Japanese elites attached great importance to the category of "national security", but perceived it not in a military-political, but in an economic context – the concept of "energy cost" played a greater role for them than the terms "military alliance" or "nuclear weapons" ^{[7, p. 80]}. This effect was due to the fact that most officials and entrepreneurs associated with this industry studied at Tokyo and Kyoto Universities, so their views on both economics and foreign policy coincided in many ways. Thus, the effectiveness of interaction was a product of the coordination of efforts of institutions of state power, entrepreneurship and education.

Finally, the integration of various social institutions into a single mechanism under the auspices of the armed forces can contribute to the improvement of military theory and practice, which in the modern world has found expression in the spread of so-called "hybrid wars". This conflict format involves combining military aggression with the use of not only espionage, sabotage and disinformation tools, but also media means (to demoralize the enemy's population), as well as diplomatic and economic sanctions.

However, the cooperative model is also not effective in all cases. The fact is that the integration of the efforts of heterogeneous structural entities, as a rule, still has a certain beneficiary, whose personal or corporate interests may not coincide with the national ones. Thus, when studying the reasons for the formation of the serfdom system in Russia, A. Kagan suggested that the formation of such institutions is due to the ability of elite groups (for example, state bureaucracy, clerical aristocracy, merchants, etc.) to collude in order to monopolize a market ^[8]. That is, combining the efforts of various institutional entities often leads to the emergence of peculiar cartels that have the ability to restrict freedom of competition and even hinder innovative development. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that cooperation can be carried out both in the form of vertical integration, when one institution dominates over the others (for example, this option occurs in the relationship between state power and the armed forces), and horizontal partnership, when institutions maintain a comparable status (fusion of science and education; interaction of family and education in matters of socialization the younger generation, etc.). Hence, the relevant question is which of the elements of the institutional matrix has priority in the creation of secondary institutions. Thus, K. Marx defended the primacy of the economic system in this matter, D. Asemoglu and J. Robinson, on the contrary, considers the key role of political institutions, and J. le Goff, using the example of the medieval West, preferred the influence of cultural changes. Since each of the above versions has a set of counterexamples, the task of society in the context of modernization should probably be to choose such a set of mechanisms for economic growth and a model of interaction between different institutions that would best correspond to the geographical, historical and other conditions of existence of a given country.

The army in the system of social institutions

It is characteristic that the armed forces (in one form or another) for most societies are one of the basic, rather than secondary, social institutions, since they are directly related to meeting people's security needs. Their activities, therefore, can be classified as public goods, but the state's costs of ensuring external and internal security often do not allow sufficient funds to be allocated to social or infrastructure projects. In the past, wars of conquest were a tool to compensate for these costs, but in the modern world they are gradually losing their meaning, because the occupation of a territory leads to an increase in the cost of maintaining control over it ^{[9, p. 247]}. Although even G. Morgenthau attributed military potential to one of the most important components of the power of the state ^{[10, p. 110]}, in a situation where the main wealth of the country is concentrated in its scientific and technical capabilities and human capital, their appropriation by force is difficult to realize. D. North and his co–authors, J. J., led the discussion on this topic. Wallace and B. Weingast – to the idea of the importance of consolidated political control over the armed forces as a threshold condition for the effective functioning of the socio-economic system. This idea was consistently argued in the widely acclaimed book "Violence and Social Orders" ^{[11, p. 169-181]}.

Indeed, law enforcement agencies – not only the army, but also various secret services – tend to have a fairly high level of corporatism, and their members often do not accept interference in their internal affairs by the civil administration. Suffice it to recall that during the implementation of the Holocaust policy in Nazi Germany, against the background of the widespread struggle against Jewish influence in the German economy and culture, tens of thousands of Jews served in the ranks of the German armed forces, according to American historian B.M. Rigg, many of whom served in command positions ^[12]. On the one hand, one can see in this the discrepancy between state ideology and political practice inherent in some authoritarian regimes. However, rather, it was about the inability of the leadership of the ruling party to somehow influence the internal structure of the army and its informal norms within the framework of the established model of civil-military relations. An indirect confirmation of this circumstance is the fact that the Luftwaffe command, headed by G. Goering, could not get German pilots to systematically shoot enemy pilots in the air after ejection – this practice was episodic on both the Eastern and Western Fronts.

In fact, even under a dictatorship, the degree of control of political leaders, groups and parties over the activities of the armed forces and their sub-institutions may remain low, and in a situation of external military and political threat, the influence of such departments becomes hypertrophied. Such warnings were made by G. Lasswell in the article "The Garrison State" in the context of the influence of militarized organizations on the organs of popular representation and civil bureaucracy ^[13]. At the same time, the high level of costs for maintaining their existence in case of danger of transition to a civil-military confrontation in case of liquidation attempts makes it necessary to look for alternative ways of using the army and special services.

As a result, the governments of militarily powerful powers often showed a desire to reorient the activities of law enforcement agencies in the economic or socio-cultural plane. Indeed, when any relatively new problem for society appears, its solution can be carried out either by an institution specially designed for this purpose, or this function is distributed among existing institutions originally created for other purposes. Thus, during the Soviet period of history, the armed forces were entrusted with a wide range of functions that were not directly related to their immediate tasks of maintaining defense capability – the army participated in the implementation of projects in the field of culture and sports, was involved in repair and construction work, developed tourism in the country, served as an institute for the socialization of youth, etc.

Of course, the degree of effectiveness of using law enforcement agencies to solve such a wide range of social tasks is highly controversial, since it can negatively affect the performance of their primary functions.

A well–known example of the inefficiency of combining institutions – in particular, labor and the army - in Russian history can be called military settlements that existed in the first half of the XIX century. The attempt to create a system that simultaneously ensured the self-sufficiency of the armed forces and the training of reserves from peasants entailed excessive regulation of the life, family relations and economic activities of the settlers. The army turned out to be an ineffective manager of agricultural land and labor resources, therefore, although settlements brought formal profit to the state treasury, they became a conflict-causing factor in socio-political relations, giving rise to uprisings and conspiracies. For example, in the projects of the reconstruction of the Russian Empire, drawn up by the "Decembrists", there was unanimity on the issue of the liquidation of military settlements.

The Army and the design of secondary institutions

At the same time, the use of individual structural components of the armed forces in the design of secondary institutions is able to overcome this negative effect.

A typical example is the history of the development of the spiritual and knightly orders of Western Europe (Templars, Hospitallers, Teutons, etc.). These organizations were special corporations involved in both armed conflicts and financial transactions. Although their existence, according to some historians, violated the very foundations of Christian ethics, the institutions of the army, the church and entrepreneurship, as it turned out, successfully complemented and balanced each other. According to modern estimates, the income of the Knights Templar was more than the income of the Holy See and some European states.

With about 9,000 commanderies in various regions, including Palestine, the Templars could simultaneously create, use and guard trade routes from East to West. At the same time, culturally, they brought to entrepreneurial activity both corporate solidarity and the desire for primacy characteristic of knights. From this perspective, it is not surprising that some researchers consider knightly orders to be the prototype of multinational corporations, since it was they who in the Middle Ages performed the functions of storing savings, issuing loans and even transmitting information messages (postal services). Thus, the combination of the ideology of chivalry with monastic vows was able to overcome the principle of "pecunia pecuniam parere non potest" ("money cannot give birth to money").

Moreover, it is the orders of chivalry that are often credited with the creation of medical schools, hospitals and the promotion of hygiene in Europe ^[14], the active construction of hospices and roads, the development of cartography, and the encouragement of scientific research. Probably, the reason for the Templars' participation in the creation of public goods lay in the plane of the religious nature of their organization. Thus, the charter of the order explicitly stated the duties of knights to protect the poor, widows and orphans, although members of the order were required to deny their own desires. If we consider that the income of the Templars reached up to 8 million livres, and the maintenance of the knights cost only about a third of this amount, the remaining funds, in accordance with the ideology of the order, should be directed to good causes of a social, political or cultural nature. In fact, it was about the creation of public goods by non-state structures, which was an important prerequisite for the intensification of the socio-economic development of European countries, which later became known as the "great divergence".

A much more interesting example within the framework of the topic under consideration is military mercenary activity, which W. McNeil called "military entrepreneurship" ^[15]. Being widespread in Switzerland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, Northern Italy, Scotland and other countries and territories in the XII–XVII centuries, it not only contributed to the improvement of military administrative procedures, but also stimulated the genesis of capitalism. Firstly, the large-scale use of mercenaries led to a revision of the tax systems of European countries that tried to recoup their expensive services, as well as an expansion of the arsenal of financial instruments – the development of loans, confiscations, artificial currency fluctuations, etc. Secondly, the appeal of residents of poor countries to this profession to some extent made it possible to reduce the demographic burden on agrarian societies with a limited area of cultivated land. This is how the Scottish Earl W. Alexander explained the reasons for the development of mercenary activity in his homeland in the XVII century: "Scotland, because of its densely populated population, is forced to free itself (like a bee hive), annually sending a swarm of its natives to military service in Poland, they manifest themselves in wars against Russia, Turkey or Sweden" ^{[16, p. 38]}.

The hiring of military detachments ensured the inflow of foreign currency into the country and, due to this, the accumulation of funds necessary for the development of manufacturing. It can even be argued that the presence of numerous mercenary detachments should have allowed merchants to ensure the security of trade on their own without having to resort to the resources of state power. At the same time, high prices for the services of mercenaries, according to R. Lakhman, allowed low-class citizens from among the guild workers to "bargain" for themselves various rights and privileges in matters of self-government by participating in the financing of military operations ^{[17, pp. 64, 105]}. In addition, not only monarchs, thanks to the involvement of mercenaries, could suppress various acts of disobedience, strengthening their own power, but also peoples seeking self-determination had the opportunity to achieve their political goals without numerous civilian casualties.

The Swiss have achieved the greatest success in this field. The recruitment system created in Switzerland provided for payment directly to the canton for the recruitment of soldiers. That is, regardless of whether the mercenary returned home with a profit or died on the battlefields, his native canton benefited. It is characteristic that this benefit (in case of death) consisted not only in receiving monetary compensation from the employer or reducing the demographic burden, but also in maintaining the internal stability of the Union. It should be borne in mind that when the cantons were united into a Confederation, the treaty of 1291 established a military alliance between them against external aggression – internal conflicts should be resolved without violence. These provisions not only corresponded poorly to the character of the era, but could hardly be implemented if we take into account the peculiarities of the Swiss population. Contemporaries wrote about the inhabitants of these territories that "these people are cruel and rude and fight with all their neighbors, even if they do not demand anything from them." Such features made peaceful coexistence in a team much more difficult, but in the field of military entrepreneurship they were very valuable – the export of military services became a form of sublimation and capitalization of violence. The most dangerous members of society, leaving Switzerland as part of mercenary groups, received a legal opportunity to direct their aggression against an external enemy, protecting fellow confederates from it. And if the military charter of Zurich in 1444 at least forbade "soldiers to tear the heart out of the body of a dead enemy," then a similar document of Lucerne in 1449 "prescribed not to take anyone prisoner, but to kill" ^{[18, p. 291]}, i.e. in some sense even encouraged the use of violence.

Another important observation on this issue was made by the eighteenth-century jurist E. de Wattel: "A mercenary soldier, learning a military craft, becomes more capable of serving his homeland if it ever needs him... The calm and deep peace that Switzerland has long enjoyed, while Europe is torn apart by wars, this long rest would soon become disastrous for it if its citizens were on a foreign they did not become hardened in military affairs and did not maintain their military ardor" ^{[19, p. 89]}.

In fact, the emergence of mercenary activity as a combination of the institutions of the army, labor and entrepreneurship provided Switzerland with the opportunity to overcome the disadvantages of a geographical and demographic nature, paving the way for a future industrial revolution. Although Switzerland's economic rise is usually associated with the second half of the 19th century, statistical data indicate that in earlier periods the standard of living in this country was higher than in many other states of continental Europe ^[20]. In fact, the socio-economic foundation for the banks, chocolatiers and watchmakers that glorified Switzerland was prepared precisely by military entrepreneurship ^[21].

In many countries outside Western Europe, such secondary institutions could not develop, for example, due to the fact that military service was associated mainly with the performance of civil, religious or family duty, and not with obtaining exclusively financial benefits. For example, if before the Mongol conquest, the service of East Slavic mercenaries in Byzantium was commonplace, then with the beginning of the rise of Moscow, local princes began to actively fight the departure of boyars to serve in other countries. Under Ivan III and Vasily III, princes and boyars were regularly sworn promises in the form of signed letters not to go to serve in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Actually, after liberation from the Horde dependence, Russia followed the path of importing, rather than exporting military services. Over time, military mercenary activity (ushkuynikov, Cossacks) turns into an episodic phenomenon. A certain role in this could be played by the limited number of neighboring countries, imperfect means of transport (which did not allow the list of potential employers to be greatly expanded) and conflicts on religious grounds. However, apparently, the main explanation lay in the absence of overpopulation in the country (as in Scandinavia or Scotland) due to the vastness of the territory. It was more profitable for the Russian rulers to "attach" people to the land than to export human resources abroad, so instead of "military entrepreneurship" a system of serfdom was formed.

An interesting example in this regard is Japan, which, like some European countries, suffered from excessive demographic pressure during the Early Modern period, but the island situation did not allow for the full development of military entrepreneurship in the foreign arena. Other practices aimed at curbing population growth have become widespread – ritual suicides ("seppuku") and duels, as well as granting samurai the right to kill representatives of the lower strata of society ("kiri-shute gomen").

The possibility of additional capitalization of military practices in the East appeared in the 20th century, when martial arts cultivated by the Usen (Buddhist warrior monks) were popularized by cinematography and animation. Hundreds of martial arts films have been shot around the world, bringing huge profits to studios and actors. It may be recalled that the 1972 film "The Way of the Dragon" grossed more than $ 130 million at the box office, although its budget was a thousand times less. In fact, the influence of art was added to the union of the institutions of the army and religion, thanks to which martial arts (wushu, karate, Aikido, etc.) expanded their scope from the fields of self-defense and attack into one of the drivers of economic growth.

At the same time, it is impossible not to recognize the existence of negative consequences of the unification of the armed forces with other elements of the institutional matrix. For example, the close intertwining of the institutions of the family and the army in Muscovite Russia of the XV–XVI centuries led to the emergence of localism – a very specific system of appointment to command positions depending not on personal talents, but on the merits of ancestors ^[22]. As a result, the most talented commanders could not count on admission to command due to the low status of their family. Although this mechanism was formally abolished under Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, even in the Russian imperial army it was preserved in an implicit form – for example, due to the so-called seniority system (periodically even "Lists of officers by seniority" were published), according to which not only regular promotions were made, but also contradictions between officers. With the equality of ranks and positions, the commander to whom the rank was assigned earlier enjoyed great authority – this system was probably the heir to the army orders of Muscovy.

That is, the positive effect of coordinating institutions is not a constant and is often associated with the conditions in which this integration takes place and its ultimate goals.

The contradictory experience of hybridization of institutions related to the use of violence also shows the example of the mafia, which arose at the junction of family institutions, entrepreneurship and criminal activity. At certain stages of the development of Sicily, this organization performed a set of positive functions and was a structure created to maintain social order in conditions when the state authorities could not cope with this task. Playing the role of an economic intermediary and guarantor of the execution of contracts, the mafia provided alternative services to official administrative bodies, and for the legalization of funds obtained by criminal means, the mafiosi actively opened legal enterprises, creating jobs. Although it is believed that the dominance of bonded social capital slows down economic development ^[23], in the criminal sphere, trusting relationships within the collective, cemented by blood ties, were rather an advantage, since they were supposed to reduce the level of mutual violence. The problem in this case was, at least, that the level of violence against people outside the mafia community only increased, since the ideology of this criminal group assumed the use of the concept of "honor" when committing acts of violence to justify such actions with motives beyond personal gain.

Conclusion

Thus, the possibilities of the armed forces' participation in modernization processes have not only not been exhausted, but have not even been fully explored. The army's ability to participate in the creation of secondary institutions through a kind of hybrid agreements with other organizations and social groups determines a wide range of opportunities to solve pressing social problems. The difficulty in this regard lies only in the fact that it is almost impossible to predict in advance which form of secondary institution, resulting from hybrid institutional agreements, will be effective. A.S. Griboyedov aptly characterized the results obtained in this way with the phrase "mixing ... French with Nizhny Novgorod". If the designed secondary institution proves to be insufficiently effective in solving socio-political, economic, environmental or other problems, the duration of its existence in the matrix structure may limit the possibilities of reform.

These facts suggest that financial investments in the development of the armed forces in the future can pay off not only through technological conversion mechanisms, but also through improving the institutional environment. In this way, even militarism in certain historical situations can play a positive role in social development. After all, the regimes of Napoleon Bonaparte in France and G.A. Nasser in Egypt were able to bring a significant share of progress to the peoples of these countries, relying precisely on the armed forces. However, researchers should be tasked with finding mechanisms to improve the efficiency of the design processes of secondary institutions with the participation of law enforcement agencies.