The Neo-Stalinist State

Class Ethnicity & Consensus in Soviet Society

Victor Zaslavsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780873322942
• eBook ISBN: 9781315495514
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Underlying current controversies about environmental regulation are shared concerns, divided interests and different ways of thinking about the earth and our proper relationship to it. This book brings together writings on nature and environment that illuminate thought and action in this realm.

Notes

Note to Introduction

1. Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 22.

Notes to Chapter 1

1. H. Pachter, "On Being an Exile," Salmagundi, 10-11 (1969-70), p. 19.

2. Thus, for example, during the Union of Writers 1978 convention, ostensibly organized to celebrate Armed Forces Day but actually dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stalin's death — a highly placed official from the Central Political Directorate of the Armed Forces delivered one such speech. Moreover, historians and sociologists still remember that the draft of one of the last volumes of the History of the CPSU was sharply criticized in the mid-'70s because of references to some incidents of Stalinist repressions during the 1947-49 period. On that occasion Sergei Trapeznikov, one of the chiefs of the ideological apparatus, reiterated that "Soviet history does not contain, and never has contained, negative pages."

3. Kommunist, 19 (1979), pp. 40, 42.

4. I. Stadniuk, Voina, part 2, Molodaia gvardiia, 5 (1974), p. 50.

5. Additional material on the rapid re-Stalinization can be obtained by comparing the first (midsixties) and second (late sixties and early seventies) editions of the memoirs of Soviet military leaders. See M. Geller, Kontsentratsionnyi mir i sovetskaia literatura (London: Overseas Publications, 1974), pp. 222-23.

6. Iu. Zhukov and R. Izmailova, "Nachalo goroda. Stranitsy iz khroniki 30-kh godov," Znamia, 2 (1977), p. 154.

7. S. Smirnov, "Svidetel'stvuiu sam," Moskva, 10 ( 1967), p. 29.

8. Iu. Bondarev, "Stranitsy iz zapisnoi knizhki," Znamia, 6 (1976), p. 115.

9. A. Kalinin, "Iz vospominanii syna," Znamia, 1-2 (1977).

10. T. Rigby, "Stalinism and Mono-Organizational Society," in R. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), pp. 53-76.

11. C. Castoriadis, "The French Left," Telos, 34 (Winter 1977-78), p. 55.

12. R, Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1971), p. 135.

13. V. Chalmaev, "Otbleski plameni," Moskva, 2 (1978), p. 187.

14. Preduprezhdenie pravonarushenii sredi nesovershennoletnikh (Minsk: Nauka-Tekhnika, 1969), p. 12.

15. The failure of Iurii Bukharin's (Larin) efforts to obtain his father's rehabilitation, for example, cannot be attributed to the ideological positions of the present Soviet leaders. In the eyes of today's population, Bukharin is not so much an ideologue as Stalin's principal political adversary. His rehabilitation would be in clear contrast to the policy of restoring the Stalin cult and was refused precisely for this reason.

16. N. Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope. A Memoir, translated by M. Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1980), p. 147.

17. A. Zinoviev, Senza illusioni (Milan: Jaca Book, 1980), p. 107.

18. S. Cohen, "Bolshevism and Stalinism," in R, Tucker (ed.), Stalinism,p.28.

19. V. Zaslavsky, "The Problem of Legitimation in Soviet Society," in A. Vidich and R. Glassman (eds.), Conflict and Control. Challenge to Legitimacy of Modern Governments (Beverly Hills-London: Sage, 1979), pp. 161-68.

20. See below, pp. 33-35.

21. H. Smith, The Russians (New York: Quadrangle, 1976), pp. 302-25.

22. Molodaia gvardiia, 12 (1968), p. 212.

23. V. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 41, p. 318.

24. A Levitin-Krasnov, "Pis'ma o russkoi molodezhi," in V. Belotserkovskii (ed.), SSSR. Demokraticheskie alternativy (Achberg: Achberger Verlaganstalt, 1976),p. 235.

25 See, for example, Politicheskii dnevnik. 1964 -70 (Amsterdam: Fond Herzena, 1972), pp. 586-94.

26. L. Chukovskaia, Otkrytoe slovo (New York: Khronika, 1976), pp. 39-46.

27. M. Rutkevich and F. Filippov (eds.), Sotsial'naia struktura razvitogo so-tsialisticheskogo obshchestva v SSSR (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), pp. 196-97.

28. A. Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs; Prentice Hall, 1973), pp. 165-70.

29. M. Agurskii, "Dvulikii Stalin," Vremia i my, 18 (1977), p. 141.

30. N. Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, translated by M. Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1974), p. 585.

31. A. Nekrich, Otreshis' ot strakha. Vospominaniia istorika (London: Overseas, 1980).

32. L. Kopelev, "O novoi russkoi emigratsii," Samosoznanie. Sbornik statei (New York: Khronika, 1976), pp. 60-61.

Notes to Chapter 2

1. A. de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doufaleday, 1955).

2. See John S. Reshetar, Jr., The Soviet Polity (New York-Toronto: Dodd, Mead, 1971); and Tibor Szamuely, The Russian Tradition (London: Seker and Warburg, 1974).

3. Stephen White, "The USSR: Patterns of Autocracy and Industrialism," in Archie Brown and Jack Gray (eds.), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), p. 56; Joseph LaPalombara, "Residues Under Revolution," Times Literary Supplement, December 2, 1977, p. 1405; Robert Conquest, "The Role of the Intellectuals in International Misunderstanding," Encounter, 51 (August 1978), p. 80,

4. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Soviet Politics: From the Future to the Past?" in Paul Cocks, Robert V. Daniels, and Nancy Whittier Heer (eds.), The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 337-51.

5. In our sample workers younger than 30 years old normally had seven or eight years of formal school education, while in the 31-40 group workers had five or six years. In the group over 40, workers with four years of schooling prevailed. In discussing Soviet school and youth organization education, one should take into account that the legitimacy of party rule depends to a significant extent on the fact that Marxist doctrine is proclaimed as the dominant ideology of Soviet society and on the acceptance of the goals of classical Marxism as the final goals of Soviet societal development. (See also Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, "Social Bases of Independent Public Egression in Communist Societies," American Journal of Sociology, 4 [1978], pp. 920-39.) Schools are the foremost agents in disseminating and popularizing official Marxism which, however, represents only one, "idealistic," tier of the Soviet ideology as a whole. The illusory, special world created by this part of the Soviet ideology ought to be related to, and reconciled with, the everyday reality. The task of harmonizing ideal and real orders is subsequently accomplished by many other agents of socialization, among which the army and the closed enterprises play a prominent role.

6. Robert J. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia ana Russian Marxism: A Sociological Study of InteHectual Radicalism and Ideological Divergence (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 35 - 72.

7. See. E. G. Antosenkov and Z. V. Kupriianova, Tendentsii v tekuchesti rabochikh kadrov (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1977). Also see Note 22.

8. Marriage to a passport-bearer is for young female peasants one of the frequently used avenues of escape from the collective farm. This practice was widespread among our respondents, who still kept close family and friendship ties with people in the countryside.

9. Nikolai Bukharin, "Politicheskoe zaveshchanie Lenina," Pravda, January 24, 1929.

10. Erving Goffman, Asylums, Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, N. Y,: Doubleday-Anchor. 1961). Service in the rank and file is obligatory for every male citizen who reaches the age of 18 unless he is a student in an institution of higher education. In the period reported, the average length of military service was three to four years. Draconian discipline reigns in the Soviet army, and the only party organizations which have neither control over administration nor even the right to discuss the actions of superiors are those in the armed forces. The schedule...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• The Rebirth of the Stalin Cult in the USSR
• Adult Political Socialization: Soviet Workers and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia
• The Regime and the Working Class
• Socioeconomic Inequality and Changes in Soviet Ideology
• The Ethnic Question in the USSR
• Closed Cities and the Organized Consensus
• Notes
• About the Author