Abstract
There has been general agreement that the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism plays a central role in Soviet politics. To at least some Western scholars, the importance of the official ideology is such that we are justified in regarding the Soviet political system as an ‘ideology’ or even ‘utopia in power’, with the official ideology functioning as a kind of blueprint which determines, or at least prescribes, the course of that society’s development.1 To the Soviet authorities themselves, there is equally no doubt that (in the words of the current Constitution) the October Revolution has given rise to a ‘new type of state’, a ‘basic instrument for defending the gains of the revolution and for building socialism and communism’, which in turn is part of a world-wide transition from capitalism to socialism.2 Yet, at least in Western scholarly circles, the nature of the ideology itself has tended to be taken as a ‘given’ in discussions of this kind.
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Notes
For these terms, see respectively Bertram Wolfe, An Ideology in Power: Reflections on the Russian Revolution ( London: Allen and Unwin, 1969 )
and Mikhail Geller and Aleksander Nekrich, Utopiya u vlasti, 2 vols. ( London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1982 ).
Barrington Moore, Jr., Soviet Politics - The Dilemma of Power (Camb. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950 ).
Rudolf Schlesinger, The Spirit of Post-War Russia. Soviet Ideology 1917–1946 ( London: Dennis Dobson, 1947 ).
Henri Chambre, Le Marxisme en Union Soviétique ( Paris: Seuil, 1955 ).
Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism ( London: Routledge, 1958 ).
See also James P. Scanlan’s recent and important book, Marxism in the USSR ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985 ).
Gustav A. Wetter, Soviet Ideology Today ( New York: Praeger, 1962 ).
Wolfgang Leonhard, Die politischen Lehren ( Frankfurt: Fischer, 1962 ).
Richard T. de George, Patterns of Soviet Thought ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966 ).
David Joraysky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science 1917–1932 ( London: Routledge, 1961 ).
Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism. A Critical Analysis ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1958 ).
See for instance Ivo Lapenna, State and Law: Soviet and Yugoslav Theory ( London: Athlone Press, 1964 )
and Nigel Harris, Beliefs in Society ( London: Watts, 1968 ).
Alfred G. Meyer, ‘The functions of ideology in the Soviet political system’, Soviet Studies, vol. 17, no. 3 (January 1966), pp. 273–85.
Alec Nove, ‘Ideology and agriculture’, Soviet Studies, vol. 17, no. 4 (April 1966), pp. 397–407; Peter B. Reddaway, ‘Aspects of ideological belief in the Soviet Union’, ibid., pp.473–83.
David Joraysky, ‘Soviet ideology’, Soviet Studies, vol. 18, no. 1 (July 1966), pp.2–19, at pp.4, 18–19.
Frederick Barghoorn, ‘Observations on contemporary Soviet political attitudes’, Soviet Studies, vol. 18, no. 1 (July 1966), pp. 66–70; Robert V. Daniels, ‘The ideological vector’, ibid., pp.71–3; Morris Bornstein, ‘deology and the Soviet economy’, ibid., pp. 74–80
Nigel Harris, ‘The owl of Minerva’, ibid., vol. 18, no. 3 (January 1967), pp. 328–39; Henri Chambre, ‘Soviet ideology’, ibid., pp.314–27.
Roy Laird, ‘The new Soviet myth: Marx is dead, long live communism’, Soviet Studies, vol. 18, no. 4 (April 1967), pp. 511–18.
Rudolf Schlesinger, ‘More observations on ideology’, Soviet Studies, vol. 19, no. 1 (July 1967), pp. 87–99
Kurt Marko, ‘Soviet ideology and Sovietology’, ibid., no. 4 (April 1968), pp. 465–81
and Robert G. Wesson, ‘The Soviet state, ideology and patterns of autocracy’, ibid., vol. 20, no. 2 (October 1969), pp. 179–86.
A related contribution which appeared elsewhere was Daniel Bell, ‘Ideology and Soviet politics’, Slavic Review, vol. 24, no. 4 (December 1965), pp. 591–621.
De George, Patterns, pp. 193, 210, 213. The first substantial Soviet collection of Marx’s early works was Karl Marx and Fridrikh Engel’s, Iz rannikh proizvedenii ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1956 ).
KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh sezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, 8th edn, 14 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1970–82), vol. 7, p.373. A helpful source on this period is Jerome M. Gilison, The Soviet Image of Utopia (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
KPSS v rez., vol. 8, p. 273. On this point see particularly Roger E. Kanet, ‘The rise and fall of the “all-people’s state”’, Soviet Studies, vol. 20, no. I (July 1968), pp. 81–93.
F. V. Konstantinov, ed., Osnovy marksistskoi filosofii ( Moscow: Nauka, 1958 )
O. V. Kuusinen (ed.), Osnovy Marksizma—Leninizma ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1959 ).
The Programme is reprinted in KPSS v rez., vol. 8, pp. 196–305, and in English translation with extensive commentaries in Leonard Schapiro, ed., The USSR and the Future (New York: Praeger, 1963).
Ibid. On the changes in foreign policy, see particularly William Zimmerman, Soviet Perspectives on International Relations 1956–1967 (Princeton University Press, 1969 ).
On ‘developed socialism’, see particularly Alfred B. Evans, ‘Developed socialism in Soviet ideology’, Soviet Studies, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 1977), pp. 409–28.
See also Marie Lavigne, ‘Advanced socialist society’, Economy and Society, vol. 7, no. 4 (November 1978), pp. 367–94
Ronald J. Hill, ‘The “all-people’s state” and “developed socialism”’, in Neil Harding (ed.), The State in Socialist Society ( London: Macmillan, 1984 )
and, for a recent Soviet view, V. P. Dmitrenko, ‘Stanovlenie kontseptsii razvitogo sotsializma v SSSR’, Voprosy istorii, 1984, no. 8, pp. 3–22.
L. I. Brezhnev, Leninskim kursom, vol. 3 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1972), pp. 234– 5.
G. E. Glezerman et al., Razvitoe sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo: sushchnost’, kriterii zrelosti, kritika revizionistskikh kontseptsii, 3rd ed. ( Moscow: Mysl’, 1979 ), pp. 20–3.
Yu. V. Andropov, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, 2nd edn ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1983 ), pp. 245–6.
K. U. Chernenko, Narod i partiya ediny. Izbrannye rechi i stat’i ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1984 ), p. 456
Chernenko, ‘Na uroven’ trebovanii razvitogo sotsializma’, Kommunist, 1984, no. 18, pp.3–21, at pp.4, 8.
A. Ross Johnson, The Transformation of Communist Ideology: the Yugoslav Case, 1945–1953 (Camb. Mass.: MIT Press, 1972 ), p. 2
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR ( New York: Viking, 1964 ), pp. 21–22.
See Martin Crouch and Robert Porter, Understanding Soviet Politics through Literature ( London: Allen and Unwin, 1984 )
Geoffrey Hosking, Beyond Socialist Realism ( London: Elek, 1980 )
and Mary Seton-Watson, ‘Myth and reality in recent Soviet fiction’, Coexistence, vol. 19, no. 2 (October 1982), pp. 206–35.
See for instance Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971 )
Samuel H. Baron and Heer, eds, Windows on the Russian Past: Essays on Recent Soviet Historiography ( Columbus, Ohio: AAASS, 1977 ).
See Aron Katsenelinboigen, Soviet Economic Theory and Political Power in the USSR ( New York: Praeger, 1980 )
and Erik P. Hoffman and Robbin F. Laird, The Politics of Economic Modernization in the Soviet Union ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982 ).
On a related issue, see Joan DeBardeleben, The Environment and Marxism—Leninism ( Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1985 ).
See Stephen Shenfield’s contribution to this volume, and also R. Judson Mitchell, Ideology of a Superpower, Contemporary Soviet Doctrine on International Relations (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1982 )
and Jerry F. Hough, The Struggle for the Third World ( Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1986 ).
Good surveys of this debate are available in Ernst Kux, ‘Contradictions in Soviet socialism’, Problems of Communism, vol. 33, no. 6 (November – December 1984), pp. 1–27
and Rene Ahlberg, ‘Konflikttheorie und Konflikterfahrung in der UdSSR’, Osteuropa, vol. 35, no. 4 (April 1985), pp. 233–55.
V. S. Semenov, ‘Problema protivorechii v usloviyakh sotsializma. Stat’ya pervaya’, Voprosy filosofii, 1982, no. 7, pp. 17–32.
A. P. Butenko, ‘Eshche raz o protivorechiyakh sotsializma’, Voprosy filosofii, 1984, no.2, pp. 116–23 (Semenov’s reply appeared in ibid., pp. 130–40).
See Helmut Dahm, Die Ideologie als Chriffre der Politik (Bonn: Berichte des Bundesinstituts für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien no. 25, 1985), p. 149
Helmut Dahm, Voprosy filosofii, 1984, no. 10, pp.3–9.
See V. Kulikov, ‘Protivorechiya ekonomicheskoi sistemy sotsializma kak istochnik ee razvitiya’, Voprosy ekonomiki, 1986, no. 1, pp. 117–28.
See, for instance, the discussion of conceptions of ‘interests’ under socialism in Ronald J. Hill, Soviet Politics, Political Science and Reform (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980), ch. 5, and of the influence of political scientists on the formation of official theory in Archie Brown, ‘Political science in the Soviet Union: a new stage of development’, Soviet Studies, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1984), pp.317–44.
and of the influence of political scientists on the formation of official theory in Archie Brown, ‘Political science in the Soviet Union: a new stage of development’, Soviet Studies, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1984), pp.317–44.
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© 1988 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
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White, S. (1988). Ideology and Soviet Politics. In: White, S., Pravda, A. (eds) Ideology and Soviet Politics. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19335-6_1
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