The Soviet Union: Gorbachev, perestroika and socialism
The Russian revolution of 1917 was originally conceived as part of a transition to socialism on a global scale. The failure of that strategy led to a far‐reaching debate about the means by which a relatively backward Soviet Russia could advance by itself to a communist future. The Gorbachev years saw the issue addressed in terms of the construction of a ‘humane, democratic socialism’, seen as part of a global process; individual scholars and publicists advanced still further towards a socialism that would embody a multi‐party system and a variety of forms of ownership. Increasingly, however, still more radical commentators identified the origin of Soviet difficulties as Leninism itself. There was, in fact, little popular support for a return to capitalism; but the experience of Soviet rule showed that the authorities in that country needed the political experience of the West as much as they needed its capital investment.
The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century
The explosion of national emotions in Eastern Europe in the last few years has demanded a serious re-evaluation of the historic clash between Marxism and nationalism. The Soviet system claimed to have resolved the national question, and now the questions of the day would seem to involve why the Soviet system failed to resolve the national question, and why so many people have been fooled into believing that it had. There is a lot of fuel for future research. Leonas Sabaliunas's study of Lithuanian social democracy demonstrates that even in the years of Soviet stagnation scholars in the west were examining aspects of the question of nationalism and Marxism. Scholars with a centrist orientation to Moscow tended to dismiss such particularism, but in the new era of Soviet life, the character of the national movements has gained new importance for comprehending Moscow's problems. Sabaliunas's topic concerned socialism in a particularly complicated region with conflicting traditions—Polish culture, Jewish socialism, and an emerging Lithuanian national consciousness, all fermenting under a Russian administration. According to the author, the national question would seem to have been more important than class, and the Lithuanian Social Democrats who refused to join Bolshevik ranks eventually ran afoul of their own contradictions in advocating class conflict and class conciliation at the same time. The fundamental tension in social democracy in Lithuania lay in the problem of defining a cultural, ethnic, and economic entity. Marxism anticipated the existence of one workers' movement representing all toilers in a territorial unit, but how was one to define that unit? Lenin defined it as the Russian Empire, others claimed smaller territorial identities, and the Lithuanians, and the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) considered Lithuania just such a distinct entity. They held that workers of all nationalities—Lithuanian, Polish, Jewish, Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian—should accept the leadership of the LSDP, but leaders of those other groups had their own territorial identifications. Such is the meat of Sabaliunas's work. The work includes statistical evaluation of LSDP publications, strike action, and organizational development. Although the work was mainly done in the period of stagnation in the Soviet Union, the author apparently even had access to some party materials in Vilnius. In the" light of the struggle for control of the Institute of Party History in 1990 and 1991, one has to worry about the safety of the materials for future scholars.
Ideology and Soviet Politics
The word ideology—it has so many ambiguous meanings and emotional colorations. What is not an ideology today—ideas, ideals, beliefs, passions, values, Weltanschauungen, religions, political philosophies, moral justifications, and so on, and so forth? One hears about "communism and capitalism as competing ideologies," about the "ideology of the small businessman," about the "failure of the United States to develop an ideology," and, pace, "the end of ideology." In an essay in Partisan Review on pornography, ideology is defined as "fantasy cast in the form of opinion or assertion," a loose and associative form of thought "sharing qualities in common with pornography itself." A front-page essay in the Times Literary Supplement on pre-Christian religious tracts discusses the effects of trafficking in "hostile ideologies" (early Epicureanism) on Christian apologists. A sociology colleague sends me an essay entitled "Change, Ferment, and Ideology in the Social Services." Surely by now some specific meaning should have developed out of common usage. And yet it has not. The word remains both descriptive and pejorative, both analytical and normative. The word does not remain neutral. Neither do people who are influenced by ideology. (In talking about the "end of ideology," one is accused of calling for an end to ideals!) Ideologies, because they somehow catch up one's passions, move people to action. This is the source of their initial power, for in a world committed to change, often quite violent change, ideologies become prime agencies of movements. But this is also the seed of their decay, for when passions are spent or betrayed, or when harsher realities confound initial promises, ideologies also can wane or, if used coercively, induce cynicism.