The dilemmas of socialism: Ideology, culture, and society in Soviet type systems during the Gorbachev era

Review Article

IVAN VOLGYES

The Dilemmas of Socialism: Ideology, Culture, and Society in Soviet Type Systems During the Gorbachev Era

George Avis (ed.), Seweryn

Bialer (ed.),

Westview, Walter

1989),

Glazov,

University

Robert (New

Russia (Boulder:

State and Sociep

in the Soviet Bloc (New

York:

the Netherlands:

Kluwer

225 pp. (Paris:

Economica,

1984),

251 pp.

Costs and Burden (Oxford:

Oxford

185 pp. and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military

(Boston:

Allen and

221 pp.

Ellen Mickiewicz, Oxford

1987), 235 pp.

261 pp.

The Soviet Defense Enigma: Estimating

1987),

Red Army

1985),

Croom Helm,

Znsi& Gorbachev’s

to Be in the Par& (Dordrecht,

1988),

Totalitariunismes

Press,

Ellen Jones,

Dilemmas:

1988),

To Be or Not

Carl G. Jacobsen,

Oxford:

Press,

Publishers,

Guy Hermet,

Society and Nationality

Socialism’s

University

Academic

Unwin,

Politics,

Citizen (London:

212 pp.

D. Connor,

Columbia Yuri

TheMaking ofthesouiet

Split Signals:

University

C. Tucker,

Television and Politics in the Soviet Union (New

Press,

1988),

Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia:

York and London:

York and

226 pp.

W. W. Norton,

1987),

From Lenin to Gorbachev

209 pp.

For those of us of advanced age and long memory, such terms as “Russia in Flux,” or “the Soviet Union at the crossroads, ” provide a flashback to books long ago read-or even written!-and offer a welcome or unwelcome d&a vu. For ever since the coming of age of the first generation of American Sovietologists, the multitude of scholarly studies that have dealt with change in the USSR have been the source of both a prolific cottage industry and a regrettably little used resource for Western policy-makers. The analyses and prognostications concerning the directions and permanence of change in Soviet have always been fuelled by as much hope or skepticism, society, consequently, optimistic goodwill or cynical dismissal as the observers of the scene could muster in the historical moment vacillating between euphoria or depression. For analysts inclined to treat the Soviet and Soviet-type systems 213, SUMMER/AUTUMN

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM, VOL. XXII,

No.

0039-3592/89/02/3

of Southern California

0279-07

$03.00

@ 1989 University

as subspecies

1989, 278-284

of

279

The Dilemmas of Socialism totalitarianism,

the changes

power by Mikhail

Sergeevich

that have occurred Gorbachev,

in the USSR

since the assumption

pose a distinct challenge;

of

how much or how

little change signifies a change of the totalitarian system itself is the fundamental topic of their analytical concern. The edited work by Guy Hermet, Totalitarianismes, grapples with the question of change in totalitarian systems before Gorbachev. It thus offers us a unique view, an analysis The divergent uses of the with its lucidity to which gyrations and mutations

of the background of the traditional features of such systems. concept of the West-the topic of the essay by Pierre Hassner the readers of Hassner have long been accustomed-with its indicates the divisions between those harking back to the

traditional, totalitarian bases of existing communist systems, versus those willing to include corporatist or neo-corporatist elements that make the system less totalitarian, though still autocratic. Jacques Rupnik’s article contrasts the “political scientese” or “objective” analysis of totalitarianism used by Westerners in his essay with the concept of totalitarian societies used in the “East.” Paying homage to the intellectual heritage of dissent in Eastern Europe, Rupnik’s emphasis is on how the “opponents,” or “dissenters” view the Soviet type “totalitarian” systems. The critics-a veritable who’s who of “dissenters” that stretches from Djilas to Zamyatin, from Illyes to Kundera, Mlynarz, and from Konrad to Milosz-castigate the promised

from Kolakowski to Paradise which only

delivered a system of evil against which “spiritual resistance” (p. 68) is a necessity of the human and ethical condition. For them, totalitarianism is not an abstract construct, but the very cause, of the ethical degradation that leads to the crisis of the system. And it is that pattern which is especially dangerous for the development of the Third World countries that seek to adopt the system as a model to be emulated, as Jean-Francois Bayart, Jean Leca, and Richard Lowenthal demonstrate in their studies and comments in this book. In the Soviet world, though-as Alexander Smolar notes-the crisis of totalitarianism stems from “the accumulation

of problems of all sorts ” including

the fact that “official

ideology is as much a factor of conservation as of change;” that “economic development” goals at best are quite “modest;” that the “great social movements” have been slowed down to a halt; and that the “aging elites have held the power for a very long time,” ruling over petrified systems (p. 160). The description above is one that Gorbachev, of course, could have uttered in his own quest for change, his quest for perestroika, a restructuring, or perhaps even better, the rebuilding of Soviet society. Or as Edgar Bronfman puts it “As all the world knows, M&hail Gorbachev . . . has pursued a program of reform that-even if its major objectives should fail-will change fundamentally the social, political, and economic character of the Soviet Union. ” (Seweryn Bialer, ed., Politics, Society and Nationali Inside Gorbachev’s Russia, p. xi). In short, Gorbachev’s aim was to change the system from a petrified stalagmite to a dynamic and modern entity. Though the reader should not be taken in by the excessive rhetorics of the opening sentence of the volume quoted above-for if the major objectives of reform will fail, fundamentally the system will remain the same whether one calls it totalitarian or authoritarian-Bialer’s volume does provide useful analysis of some of the actual changes one witnesses in Gorbachev’s Russia. Though the articles in the volume by Seweryn Bialer analysing the Yeltsin Affair, and the changes taking place in the aftermath of the XIX party Congress-by Alexander Motyl and Laurie Salitan on Soviet nationality problems, and by Peter Hauslohner dealing with pre-Gorbachev politics-are all interesting studies, the most intriguing chapters are those written by Archie Brown and Gail Lapidus. For Brown the question

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM

280

of change is important, especially if the prevalent Soviet political culture based on a rigid and outmoded ideology is also likely to be changed. His essay examines how the key concepts of ideology-class consciousness and class struggle, the leading role of the party, and democratic centralism-are being altered in practice, while retaining key elements in theory (p. 11). By identifying that “Marxism-Leninism provides a language and a framework for Soviet political discourse” (p. 17), Brown emphasizes that both the opponents and supporters of@stroiku will continue to frame the debate of change in these terms. Yet for him this does not mean that changes in the political culture are not taking place. Quite the contrary, the traditional Soviet values and beliefs, the shared perceptions of history can accommodate various new elements even if many past values continue to make up the major portion of the dominant culture. To Brown, the terms of the debate are flexible enough so that “important change can take place without the rejection” of either ideology or traditional conceptions of political culture (p. 30). Egalitarianism, or freedom, glasnost, or uskorenie, can all be accommodated, just as similar concepts of reform in the beginning and at the end of the 192Os, in the mid 195Os, and in the 1960s were able to accommodate “new” values without altering the bases of the system. Whether Soviet political culture can accommodate major institutional changes, ideological innovation, and radically expanded pluralization of values, however, is open to debate. For Gail Lapidus in her article “State and Society: Toward the Emergence of Civil Society” the question of accommodative ability is eo ipso answered in the affirmative, for she posits that unlike previous reforms the reaching . . . effort to adapt a set of anachronistic

Gorbachev reform “is also a far economic and political arrangements

to the needs of an increasingly complex society” (p. 121). Her often brilliantly argued essay suggests that unlike previous reforms, the current efforts of the reformers is aimed at creating “socialist pluralism” accepting the validity of opposition views, knowing the truths about the Soviet past, being engaged in open discussions (glasnost!) and debates in the spirit of trust (pp. 134-6). I n short, by recognizing that Soviet society is not homogenic or unitary-as the classical Marxist-Leninist or totalitarian concepts would have it-but that it “encompasses diverse and potentially conflicting social interests, a view long held by Tat’yana Zazlavskaya . is a point of departure for the management of social and political affairs” (p. 137). Though Lapidus is cautious in recognizing the constraints on reforms, her article suggests that a civil society of a particular sort is about to make its appearance in the USSR. For Brown as well as Lapidus, thus, the success of Gorbachev’s reforms will depend on his-and his reformist colleagues’-ability to change the political culture extensively enough to see the emergence of that civil society. This is also the main topic of the most extensive chapter in Robert C. Tucker’s Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russiu. From Lenin to Gorbachev. Though all of the articles contained in this book previously have appeared in some sort of published form before, they all tangentially or directly deal with the interrelationship between communist culture and Soviet politics. To Tucker the key to change in Soviet culture-especially during the current period-is the attempt to infuse new thinking into the polity (pp. 152 ff.) and to do so while maintaining controls on the potentially more destabilizing elements of Soviet life, including some of the activities of those accused of being engaged in the act of inukomyslie (dissenters, or than deemed ‘proper’) (p. 185), He suggests that the those thinking “otherwise” tolerance

Gorbachev

shows toward them is a set of initial moves toward creating a new

The Dilemmas

and less repressive

order (p. 187),

of Socialism

all the while expecting

281

the transformation

of the

Soviet citizen from one characterized by cognitive dissonance (“cross-thinking” as Tucker calls it on p. 184) to a new Soviet man, more akin to his fellow-men elsewhere in the democratic The Making

world. of the Soviet Citizen, the new Soviet man, is the topic of the volume edited by

George Avis. In this volume the authors explore the basic building blocks of the political socialization process from “Moral Education,” through “Political” “Atheistic,” “Work, ” “Gender,” “Multicultural”, and “Peace Education,” to the role of youth organizations and “Student Responses to Communist Upbringing in Soviet Higher Education.” Using mostly recent 1984-85 data-though Avis bases his own, concluding article on earlier studies-the authors generally find fault with the process of Soviet political socialization practices. Clearly, for them, the Soviet authorities have not been successful in creating a politically conscious Soviet citizen. Though the articles are technically competent, the volume as a whole fails to address the general topic; an introductory or concluding essay evaluating the failures and successes of political socialization processes among Soviet youths would have greatly benefitted the book. Yet, somehow, a political culture change is impossible to effect without a change in the process of political socialization practices-as Soviet authorities have clearly found under Gorbachev. The lies about the past-and revealing the truths!-in fact has already caused the cancellation of history graduating exams, the withdrawal of student and teachers’ history texts from the Soviet higher schools, and the quiet passing of an elderly generation of official historians, who for decades had treated history as their private fiefdom of official propaganda. It is not solely history, however, that has to be rewritten: a new attitude toward “truth” and its sources must be inculcated. In short, political socialization processes of a new sort must not merely be utilized by the schools but must also be utilized toward the entire Soviet polity if Gorbachev is to succeed in his perestroika of the mind. No stronger support can be given in this respect to Gorbachev than that supplied by the media of political communication and socialization, and most especially television. Ellen Mickiewicz’s elegantly written and brilliant volume, Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union, accomplishes the task of writing the first major study of the political impact of television in the USSR, and of the “new impetus and motive power” Gorbachev has given to the television revolution (p. v). Mickiewicz, long one of the most astute observers and diligent analysts of the impact of communications on Soviet politics, begins by mapping out the organizations, institutions, and practices of Soviet TV including detailed information on new technologies, programming, and what she calls the pattern of media exposure. Her analysis follows up the introduction with a superb analysis of the Soviet audience, and the ability-or inability-of the television specialists to “reach” them with desired messages. These chapters are by far the best and most cogent analysis written on this topic in any language. Yet her major contribution is her treatment of the world of news broadcast as a national communication message to some 150-200 million people of all ages. She examines the way political information is played, treated, offered, selected, and restricted, including the decisive changes that glasnost has made on the Soviet media scene. She compares and contrasts her findings with American practices and themes broadcast on US media, offers detailed analysis of programming, and gives the reader a feel for the varieties of non-news programs available for viewers. Mickiewicz does not pull any punches, for she realizes the importance of television as the most potent device

282

STUDIESIN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

to “tint”

the message through such customary devices as loaded words or carefully selected images (p. 130). In a fundamental statement, Mickiewicz maintains that “The definition of glasnost will . . be a continuing problem. Clearly it is a central-indeed the central-component of the campaign to render the media more effective. Logic suggests therefore that to limit glasnost is to limit effectiveness and the political impact of the media (p. 2 15). ” As Gorbachev struggles with creating support for his program of reform, his ability to manipulate the media, to enlist their help with the transformation of Soviet society, will be a crucial determinant of his chances for success. One of the problems that Gorbachev must wrestle with is the extraordinary weight and influence of the military in Soviet society. Unlike Western society, the goals of the Soviet decision-makers had long been focused on the creation of a Soviet empire that internationally could not be challeged with military might; at the cost of even the citizenry’s daily welfare, the demands of the Soviet military long had to be satisfied. A first rate military power, in short, existed in the third rate socio-economic system with practically no overlap between the military and society, or the military and the economy. Yet, for many years, the West possessed only rough estimates of the actual costs of Soviet military expenditures. The volume edited by Carl G. Jacobsen entitled The Soviet Defense Enigma: Estimating Costs and Burden, published for the Stockholm makes a real contribution to this International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), convoluted topic. While most of the chapters, written by Gerard Duchene, Dmitri Steinberg,

Peter Wiles, Kiichi Mochizuki,

Mary A&land-Hood,

David R. Jones,

and

Alec Nove, are highly technical in nature, the volume as a whole is comprehensible and coherent. Though the authors as a collective fail to come out with conclusive and agreed upon figures, they all appear to challenge earlier methods of costing used by some of the most respected practitioners in the field. The challenge is not just in regards to the assumption of lower than expected costs of the military, but also in regards to evaluating the military economy as having greater utility to the civilian sector than it has been customarily expected. The military in Soviet society, however, is not just a consumer of needs, but a complex organism, with a well-articulated Bewusstsein, and an institutional backing coming

from the broadest

strata of society. Ellen Jones’ excellent study, Red Army and is the first full-length study of the role of the Soviet Army in the societal context. Jones looks at the army as a complex military organization and analyses national policy-making, manpower policies, conscription, career professionals, the political officer, etc. She goes one step further, however; her book also Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military,

deals in extenso with two oft-misunderstood

or ignored topics: the role of the military as

an agent of political socialization and the minority question. Jones’ study places the army in an historical and societal context; history is used as a background to events in the past to illustrate replicability in the future. Such an approach, in fact, is clearly warranted, for continuity in Soviet military affairs, as Jones demonstrates, is more of a rule than an exception. As for society, the Soviet Army receives its conscripts and its professional recruits not from a subset, but from society as a whole; it also returns those who complete their military service to the civilian sector. Hence, its function as an agency of political socialization remains more important than in states where volunteer-armies predominate, and the Soviet leadership “views the costs and benefits of maintaining a large conscript army from a broader standpoint than that of the armed forces military capabilities alone” (p. 17 1). In fact, Jones suggests that “the discharged draftees . . . are generally ‘better’ Soviet citizens after military service

The Dilemmas of Socialism than before.”

And for the communist party this is not a neglibible consideration. Indeed, for the communist party such “supports” as that provided by the military are essential as it faces its biggest challenge in years. Today it has two basic choices: it can

(1) either lead the process of change, change with the change, and continue to maintain a “leading” position in a changed society, or (2) it can oppose the changes, restrict them to “non-party” spheres, and eventually be destroyed by a society that falls into the abyss of backwardness. For the upper elite, for the members of the party apparat, and “for the some 20 million Soviet men and women and their families” who “constitute the essential core of Soviet society” (p. 8), the choice and direction the party will take has a special bearing in regards to their perspective, privileges, responsibilities and their very future.

Yuri Glazov’s

book,

To Be or Not to Be in the Party, deals precisely with the

topic of party membership in the USSR. Glazov’s writing is tendentious, strident, often angry, always colorful; he is clearly a man who hates the apparatchiks, their mentality, privileges, and the injustice the party and its members have permeated in Soviet society. Using myriads of case studies he dissects the membership, the elite and the rank and file, the gender gap, the relationship of the party to the KGB, the act of joining and the act of expulsion from the CPSU; he even deals with the party as a myth and the future of the communist party in reference to the people’s attitudes toward the former. Though in light of recent-and not-sorecent!-revelations about Brezhnev and Stalin and their coteries, not to speak of the bribery trials in the Caucasus, one could quarrel with Glazov that “As far as Soviet leaders are concerned there are no scandals, bribes and Watergate stories among them” (p. 212), his conclusion that “Nothing now indicates that this regime based on the Communist Party will last for an indefinite period of time . .” could hardly be argued with. Especially, to continue quoting Glazov, “those who hate evil and feel fear are ready to dedicate themselves to another life-long struggle with this armed devil” (p. 213). Are these communist

systems, their leaders, and their regimes invulnerable,

can they

be removed only by force, by the spilling of blood? Or do these systems somehow implode, collapse of their own weight? Walter D. Connor’s Socialism’s Dilemmas: State and Society in the Soviet Bloc explores the dynamics of change, and the forces of conflict cum stagnation for the USSR and Soviet type systems. Though most of Connor’s essays have appeared in press earlier, the collection is tied together by the permanence and perseverance of societal problems in these systems. In this collection, one of the most astute analysts of communist societies delineates the forces of integration and disintegration that affect daily Soviet type of polities. The volume is “peopled” by these forces: generational divergences, the role of the workers, intellectuals, successors and progenitors, deviants and alienated dissenters; in their complexity Connor’s social forces are tearing at the fabric of an outmoded sociopolitical and economic entity: the Soviet-type state. Their demands, that stem from the very progression of development these states have witnessed, sooner or later can only be accommodated by the elite and by the system, provided that the first gives up (some of) its power, and the second alters its very basic rules and requirements. As events in Eastern Europe-with which the second half of the volume is really concerned-hitherto have proven, the elite is rarely anxious or willing to limit its cherished privileges, to supervise its own demise, or vote itself out of existence, and the institutionalized bureaucratic “state” remains the very organizer of political power. In short, in Soviet type societies,

as reforms in the USSR

and elsewhere

in Eastern

284

STUDIES

IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM

Europe are taking place, there remain two fundamental

problems.

The first problem is

for the elite to ponder; throughout the existence of the communist system, the elite always treated the polity as subjects, telling them what do do, where to stand, what to wish for-the giant kindergarten syndrome. Now suddenly the elite-or at least the elite that seeks reforms!-wishes to make a contract with a “mature” citizenry: one that will understand that the communist party’s stature and role could be diminished significantly only if a formula for the maintenance of the principles of “the inviolability of and “the leading role of the communist party” can be found. But such socialism,” bargains are usually arrived at by a process of dealing with citizens as equals, and as long as the communist party refuses to treat the citizenry as equals, these new equilibria cannot be reached. The second problem for the communist systems lies in the inability of these states and societies to keep up with the developments that have transformed the Western democracies so decisively during the last two decades. The technological revolution altered the structure of Western societies, gave the citizenry unheard of wealth and a level of living that can only be dreamed of in the communist “East. ” The demands of the people of otherwise!-could

the Soviet-type systems for the “goods’‘-be they material or be curtailed as long as the people of the region were closed in behind

an “Iron Curtain.” As the people of these states have emerged to become more of a part of the outside world, as television and radio, travel, books and movies, breach the once impenetrable boundaries, the demands of the people for the “goods” available elsewhere will continue to grow. The reformers will need to harness the efforts, the efficiency of the people, their desire for change, iftheir version ofperestroika is to succeed. As the demands of the people outrun the availability of the goods-as historically!-the elite will suddenly be forced to realize, as Connor

it always has done, puts it, “that guns

are an asset whose value is magnified in the absence of legitimacy” (p. 260). In fact, for Soviet type-systems, if the leaders really wish to effect those much needed changes, the most significant act would be precisely to broaden the bases of the legitimacy they currently

are so sorely lacking.