The New Middle Class and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia by Mark Heller; Nadav SafranReview by: Alexander BlighMiddle Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 237-239Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283176 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 237

also external investments in Lebanese discord to take into account - investments which by 1958, and more so by 1975, were coming from every direction. Still, something could have been done, and can still be done, at the Lebanese level, and by the Christians before others, as happened between 1918 and 1926. If they persist in opting for devolution rather than evolution, the Christian Lebanese may well find themselves, before long, jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The threads of what may actually be the real lesson in Dr Zamir's story can be found in his own text: 'The strong ties of the Christians, particularly the Maronites, with Europe led the Muslims to identify them with the European powers, and to regard them as traitors ... The Christians ... often behaved in a superior and provocative manner, further increasing Muslim hostility ...'. Particularly perceptive is another remark: 'Between 1918 and 1920 the Christian demand for an independent state in Lebanon appeared to the Muslims of Syria as a more immediate and serious threat than the corresponding Zionist demand in Palestine'. Dr Zamir explains this irony on two counts, but misses a third, which I consider the most important: the Muslims of Syria in 1920 identified Zionism as an external danger, but they diagnosed the call for Christian Lebanese separatism, in collusion with a Western power, as treason and subversion from within. Their diagnosis of the Christian position may have been uncharitable, but so was the dominant Christian Lebanese attitude towards the aspirations of the Muslims of Syria at the time. The fatal mistake the Maronites committed in 1920 was not hailing the establishment of the State of Greater Lebanon by General Henri Gouraud in September; it was demonstrating in joy over the defeat of Faisal's army by the same General Gouraud in July. Had they been wiser then, they would have saved themselves many problems. To err, of course, is human, but it is never too late to mend.

In dealing with the historical background to the story of the formation of modern Lebanon, Dr Zamir, excusably, had to resort to generalizations based on available studies of Lebanese history which remain arguable. For example, the concept of the Lebanese Imarah (Emirate), between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, stands for considerable revision. The complete story of the Maronites, from the origins until the nineteenth century, remains to be told. The story of the Sunnites and Shiites in Lebanon remains virtually unknown, and only the faint outline of the story of the Druzes is as yet discernible. Much remains to be done in the field before any safe generalizations on such matters can be made. There is no real evidence, for example, that the special relations between the Maronites and France date back to the capitu- lations of 1535. As late as the early seventeenth century, the Maronite relations appear to have been more with the Medici of Tuscany. It was probably the chancery of Louis XIV, later in that century, that first advised the French adoption of the Maronites. Certainly, the documented history of the special relations between the Maronites and France dates from no earlier time.

KAMAL S. SALIBI

The New Middle Class and Regime Stability in Saudi Arabia by Mark Heller and Nadav Safran. Cambridge, MA: CenterforMiddle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 1985. Pp. 36, appendices, notes.

In this Paper No. 3 of the Harvard Middle East Series (Modern Series) the authors attempt to present and analyse a contemporary problem in the politics of the Middle East. The task that they have undertaken is indeed enormous: to define the new middle class in Saudi Arabia, describe its size and components, and assess its participatidn in current and future crises in the kingdom - and to accomplish all this with the very scarce data that are available.

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238 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

To date, most efforts to draw a full picture of Saudi Arabia's political and social processes have been hampered by the lack of reliable data. The authors of this short essay succeed in presenting a rounded picture by asking the right questions when figures are not available. Their main thesis is that Saudi Arabia has a new middle class, which plays a growing role in the Saudi political system. While there does not seem to be a trigger-issue that will spur members of this new class to change the rules of the game, Heller and Safran feel that this is likely to emerge within the next two to ten years.

As the format - both physical and in content - suggests that this well researched and interestingly presented pilot-study will be further developed at a later date, the bulk of my following remarks will deal with points to be developed in a fuller study rather than with a commentary on the text per se.

However, I wish to take issue with the authors on the idea that there is a new middle class, and that it first appeared in the 1960s. First, the emergence of the Free Princes in the context of the succession rivalries had very little to do with a Saudi middle class. The Princes' usage of liberal slogans, aimed at recruiting individual educated com- moners into their ranks, was unsuccessful then as well as on the many occasions it has been repeated. The fact that the constitution and other major changes promised by King Fahd has not yet materialized may indicate that there is no comprehensive middle class that has to be satisfied. Still, the King's promises are aimed at placating those individuals who wish to feel their own impact on the royal Saudi political system.

Secondly, at least in terms of figures the new middle class has first emerged as a result of the early 1970s oil-boom. The increase in production and in the income emanating from oil heightened the need for skilled labor and improved Saudi ability to finance the training required. Thus, the current sharp decline in oil production necessitates a new set of questions regarding this emergent middle class. How will a possible slow-down, or even cessation of advanced training for young Saudis and the decrease in the number of appropriate jobs inside the kingdom, for example, affect the strength of this class and its potential to trigger future changes in the Saudi system?

One might also ask whether the development of any class can be traced by numbers alone. Heller and Safran reach many of their conclusions on the basis of the growth of such groups as civil servants, military officers and teachers (p. 10). What is needed is an analysis of these figures broken down by the origins of the members of this alleged new middle class. The writers themselves say (p. 13) that '... the new middle class ... has attained a "critical mass" that, in other countries, has produced revolutionary change'. As this change has not yet occurred in Saudi Arabia, one is prompted to ask the inevitable question of its probability, and of whether the numbers that fit into a prescribed model necessarily preclude that all those belonging theoretically to this class constitute one comprehensive interest group. If, for example a large proportion is royalty or members of tribes, their standing as an interest group may not be that suggested by the authors.

In addition, a criterion having to do with the reaction of the middle-class members to new values and methods should be applied. For it is not always true that Western- educated young men become revolutionaries; for example, it is not unknown for returning Saudi students to turn into devout Muslims. While such information can only be gained by meticulous research in the field - which is not possible at present - the problem itself should be presented to the reader.

Another set of questions has to do with the place of Muslim ideology in the political thinking of the ruling and the new middle classes. Future research should perhaps begin by developing a unique Saudi model. It should include appropriate components from the present study, derived from Islam-inspired changes in Middle East regimes and allowing enough leeway for the local Saudi factors described by Heller and Safran (pp. 15-23).

This essay indeed provides material necessary for all those interested in contemporary

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BOOK REVIEWS 239

Saudi Arabia. We can only hope that it will be continued along the lines suggested above.

ALEXANDER BLIGH

Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920 - The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community by Tadeusz Swietochowski, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, Pp.XIV + 256, 3 maps, bibliography, index. ?25.

During the last 10-15 years many monographs and articles have been published on different aspects of the national movement among the Muslims of pre-revolutionary Russia and Soviet Union. It is a popular topic in the West, especially in the United States. Unfortunately, most of these publications are of mediocre quality. Not one can be compared with the standard work of Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union - Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923 (rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), which is still unequalled. The authors, in majority political scientists, lack the necessary linguistic skills and are therefore, as a rule, dependent entirely on Russian sources. Generally they do not possess the historical background in Islamic culture and tend to approach this complicated and difficult problem from the Russian and Soviet standpoint. Too often the 'natives' are treated as 'objects' of Russian colonialism or of the Soviet social engineering, as a kind of folkloric savages rather than as inheritors of a long and glorious civil- ization going back to the time of Alexander the Great.

For several reasons Tadeusz Swietochowski's book is a brilliant exception. It is the result of a splendid scholarly research and uses all available sources in all languages, Russian but also Turkish and Azeri Turkic. Moreover, Swietochowski's work concerns one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult area of Russian Islam, Azerbaijan, because the national movement in this territory was submitted to several contradictory poles of attraction: Young Turks, Iranian revolutionary movement, Tatar pan-Turkism, Russian and Armenian socialism and so on. Only an accomplished scholar can tackle the Azerbaijani problem. For this reason it has attracted few specialists, with the only exception of Audrey Alstadt-Mirhadi whose 'Azerbaijani-Turkish Community of Baku before World War I' (PhD Chicago, 1983) has unfortunately not yet been published.

Swietochowski' analyses the evolution of the Russian administration, the impact of the discovery of oil in Baku, the rise of the native intelligentsia, the literary revival of the nineteenth century and the beginning of secularism, the school reform, the appearance of the national press in Russian and in Azeri-Turkic and finally, with full details the description of the political evolution from 1905 to 1920.

We must congratulate Swietochowski on his superb book. I do hope that it will open a new chapter in the scholarly research on Russian and Soviet Islam and that it will be followed and used as a model by other young scholars, who are better trained than their predecessors, who have better linguistic skills and have a greater understanding of the problems of Islam. It is indeed high time for Western scholars to stop 'discovering' Soviet Islam and wasting their time and efforts in sterile discussions about the place of Islam in the national awareness of Soviet Muslims.

ALEXANDRE BENNIGSEN

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