Abstract
Well-removed from the clash of opposing social systems on the grand stage of history, the relentless progress of ‘developed socialism’ towards the communist future and the other epic themes of official Soviet ideology is an identifiable component in the creed of the party-state which is confined to much more modest matters. Its project involves immediate, palpable improvements in the everyday lives of Soviet citizens: its concern is more with the availability of such things as kitchen utensils or housing space than with the millenarian visions associated with ‘the construction of communism’.
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Notes
Antonio Carlo, ‘The crisis of bureaucratic collectivism’, Telos, no. 43 (summer 1980), pp. 3–10.
See Ryzhkov’s speech to the 27th Party Congress, Pravda, 4 March 1986, and the basic directives of the Twelfth Five Year Plan in Pravda, 9 March 1986.
Some of this legislation is outlined by Ronald J. Hill in his ‘Party-state relations and Soviet political development’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 10 no. 2 (April 1980), pp. 149–65
and in the same author’s ‘The development of local government since Stalin’s death’, in Everett M. Jacobs, ed., Soviet Local Politics and Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 18–33.
See also Michael E. Urban, ‘State socialist administration in the USSR’, in K. Tummala (ed.), Administrative Systems Abroad, 2nd edn (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1984), esp. pp. 378–82.
More extended discussions of the legislation concerning the role of local soviets in the economy may be found in V. A. Perttsik, Realizatsiya zakonodatel’stva mestnymi sovetami ( Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1985 )
V. S. Martemyanov, Khozyaistvennye prava mestnykh sovetov (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1981); and other works.
Barabashev, ‘Na novom etape’, pp. 15–16; P. Shamanov, ‘Rastut etazhi Sverdlovska’, Izvestiya, 17 June 1981.
See, for instance, G. V. Barabashev, ‘Organy narodnogo predstavitel’stva’, Sovety narodnykh deputatov, June 1978, pp. 9–16
Ukaz Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, ‘Ob organizatsii raboty s nakazami izbiratelei’, in Izvestiya, 3 September 1980.
Stephen Sternheimer, ‘Running Soviet cities: bureaucratic degeneration, bureaucratic politics, or urban management?’, in G. B. Smith (ed.), Public Policy and Administration in the Soviet Union ( New York: Praeger, 1980 ), p. 87.
G. B. Polyak, Byudzhet goroda ( Moscow: Finansy, 1978 ).
See S. A. Avak’yan and L.A. Sobolev, Metodicheskie rekomendatsii po sovershenstvovaniyu otnoshenii ob edinenii, predpriyatii i organizatsii Ministerstva elektrotekhnicheskoi promyshlennosti s mestnymi sovetami, ikh organami i deputatami ( Moscow: Informelektro, 1981 ), pp. 5–19.
Compare, for instance, D. Kartvelishvili, ‘K vysokim konechnym rezul’tatam’, Sovety narodnykh deputatov, October 1985, pp. 7–14
with G. Gubanov, ‘Pustyr’: vybrannye mesta iz perepiski so vedomstvami’, Izvestiya, 9 July 1985.
A rare, although by no means revolutionary, exception to this pattern is an article by O. Latsis advocating competition among firms in retail trade: see his ‘Dlya pokazatelya iii dlya pokupatelya’, Izvestiya, 2 November 1984.
See, for instance, V. Surkov, ‘A gde zhe otpoved’ byurokratam’, Izvestiya, 21 September 1982.
Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller and Gyorgy Markus, Dictatorship over Needs ( New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983 ).
The seminal work of Lukacs on this subject is his essay, ‘Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat’, in his History and Class Consciousness ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971 ).
Cf. George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi’s argument that the ruling class in state socialist societies stakes its claim to authority on the basis of both technical and ‘teleological’ knowledge in their Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Janovich, 1979 ).
Paternalism has been a pronounced attribute of Russian authority relations in the pre-Soviet period as well: see, for instance, Walker McKechnie and Don Karl Rowney, eds, Russian Officialdom ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980 ).
Empirical accounts of this process may be found in Theodore Friedgut, ‘Citizens and Soviets: can Ivan Ivanovich fight City Hall?’, Comparative Politics, vol. 10 (July 1978), pp. 461–77
and Vladimir Voinovich, The Ivankiad (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977 ).
See Michael E. Urban, ‘Information and participation in Soviet local government’, Journal of Politics, vol. 44 (February 1982), pp. 79–80.
See for instance M. Shimansky, ‘Po lichnomu voprosu’, Izvestiya, 11 January 1985.
Frederic Jameson, The Prison-House of Language ( Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972 ), p. 101.
See for instance Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics ( Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1976 )
Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977 )
and Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology ( New York: Hill and Wang, 1968 ).
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 2nd edn ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968 ).
A. J. Greimas, Structural Semantics ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983 ).
Alexandre Bourmeyster, ‘Iouri Andropov dialogue avec les ouvriers soviétiques’, Essais sur le dialogue, vol. 2 (1984), p. 317; idem, ‘L’Enonciateur, l’enonciataire et l’autre’, Essais sur le discours soviétique, vol. 2 (1982), pp. 61–98.
Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981 ), p. 126.
Michael E. Urban and John McClure, ‘The folklore of state socialism: semiotics and the study of the Soviet state’, Soviet Studies, vol. 35 (October 1983), pp. 471–86.
Alexandre Bourmeyster, ‘Utopie, ideologic et skaz’, Essais sur le discours soviétique, vol. 3 (1983), p. 44.
A. J. Greimas and F. Rastier, ‘The interaction of semiotic constraints’, Yale French Studies, vol. 41 (1968), pp. 86–105.
Michael E. Urban, ‘The structure of signification in the General Secretary’s address: a semiotic approach to Soviet political discourse’, Coexistence, vol. 24, no. 3 (December 1987).
See, for instance, Jurgen Habermas, ‘On systematically distorted communication’, Inquiry, vol. 13 (Autumn 1970 ), pp. 184–219, and the same author’s Theory of Communicative Action ( Boston: Beacon, 1984 ).
For a stimulating discussion of structure and its functioning in the area of practical pursuits, see Lucien Goldmann, ‘Structure: human realities and methodological concept’, in his The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970 ), pp. 98–124.
For a discussion of this question, see Michael E. Urban, ‘From Chernenko to Gorbachev: a repoliticization of official Soviet discourse?’ (Paper presented to the III World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Washington DC, 30 October - 4 October 1985 ).
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© 1988 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
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Urban, M.E. (1988). Local Soviets and Popular Needs: Where the Official Ideology Meets Everyday Life. 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_7
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