Abstract
Throughout the history of the Soviet state, Marxist-Leninist ideology has attempted to define the current stage of development of Soviet society and show the relationship between trends of change in the current stage and the attainment of the higher phase of communism. Lenin came to view the prolonged institutionalisation and stabilisation of socialist relations as a necessary prerequisite for progress toward communism. In the early years of Stalin’s rule it was assumed that the Soviet Union was at such a rudimentary state of economic development as to make the goal of communism highly remote. However, in 1952 Stalin asserted that the USSR had begun a new, higher stage of development, and authored the notion that socialism would pass to communism through a series of distinct stages. Khrushchev departed from Soviet tradition by announcing at the end of the 1950s that the Soviet Union had entered the stage of direct transition to communism, and left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with a Programme elaborating on this conception of the full-scale construction of communism. By introducing the concept of developed socialism, Brezhnev repudiated the argument that Soviet society was in a transitional stage and initiated a reassessment of the nature of the entire phase of socialism. Brezhnev also launched plans for the preparation of a new Party Programme describing developed socialist society. Since Brezhnev’s death, Soviet leaders have honoured his pledge to adopt a new Programme for the CPSU, but have advocated a more realistic interpretation of the process of improvement and perfection of developed socialism.
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Notes
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976 ), pp. 17–19.
V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970 ), p. 358.
‘O proekte Konstitutsii Soyuza SSR’, in I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, vols. 14–16 (Stanford, Cal.: Hoover Institution, 1967 ), vol. 14, pp. 140–1.
Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1971 ), pp. 89–91.
Ibid., p. 91; Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New York: Vintage, 1961), pp. 114, 168.
N.S. Khrushchev, ‘Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the 20th Party Congress’, in Leo Gruliow (ed.), Current Soviet Policies, vol. 2 ( New York: Praeger, 1957 ), p. 55.
On control figures for development of the USSR national economy in 1959–1965’, in Leo Gruliow (ed.), Current Soviet Policies, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 42. I have translated razvernutoe stroitel’stvo,kommunisticheskogoobshchestva as ‘full-scale construction of communist society’ rather than ‘extensive building of communist society’.
Some scholars argue that contending forces in the Soviet political leadership forced the moderation of Khrushchev’s optimism and transformism in the drafting of the 1961 Party Programme. See for instance George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), p. 82. Nevertheless, in historical perspective the Programme clearly bears the stamp of Khrushchev’s distinctive influence.
‘Pyat’desyat let velikikh pobed sotsializma’, in L. I. Brezhnev, Leninskim kursom, 9 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1970–82), vol. 2, pp. 134–5.
Robert Sharlet, The New Soviet Constitution of 1977: Analysis and Text ( Brunswick, Ohio: King’s Court Communications, 1978 ), p. 75.
See Grigorii Glezerman et al., Razvitoe sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo: sushchnost’, kriterii zrelosti, kritika revizionistskikh kontseptsii ( Moscow: Mysl’, 1973 ), p. 18.
M. A. Suslov, Na putyakh stroitel’stva kommunizma, vol.2 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1977 ), p. 440.
Richard Kosolapov, ‘The approach to the study of developed socialism’, World Marxist Review, vol. 17, no. 9 (September 1974), pp. 60–70
Kosolapov, Socialism: Questions of Theory ( Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979 ), p. 464.
Glezerman et al., Razvitoe sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo, 3rd ed. ( Moscow: Mysl’, 1979 ), p. 25.
Maksim P. Kim, ‘O periodizatsii protsessa stroitel’stva sotsializma v SSSR’, Kommunist, 1981, no. 7, pp. 31–40, at p.40.
Yuri V. Andropov, ‘Rech’ na plenume TsK KPSS’, in Andropov, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1983 ), p. 286.
M. S. Gorbachev, Zhivoe tvorchestvo naroda (Moscow: Politizdat, 1984), p. 7; ‘Rech’ general’nogo sekretarya TsK KPSS M. S. Gorbacheva na plenume TsK KPSS 11 marta 1985 goda’, Pravda, 12 March 1985.
The theme of realism has also been associated with a less optimistic assessment of the prospects for rapid improvements in living standards in the USSR. On this point, see Alfred B. Evans, Jr., ‘The decline of developed socialism? Some trends in recent Soviet ideology’, Soviet Studies, vol. 38, no. 1 (January 1986), pp. 1–23.
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© 1988 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
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Evans, A.B. (1988). Developed Socialism and the New Programme of the CPSU. 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_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19335-6_5
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