Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR: Essays dedicated to Leonard Schapiro

219 Pages·1983·20.789 MB·English

by  T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown, Peter Reddaway (eds.)

AUTHORITY, POWER AND POLICY
IN THE USSR
AUTHORITY, POWER AND
POLICY IN THE USSR
Essays dedicated to Leonard Schapiro
Edited by
T. H. RIGBY, ARCHIE BROWN AND
PETER REDDAW AY
Editorial matter and collection © T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown
and Peter Reddaway 1980, 1983
Chapters 1, 2 and 10 © T. H. Rigby 1980. Chapter 3 ©Neil
Harding 1980. Chapter 4 © Richard Taylor 1980. Chapter 5 ©
Alec Nove 1980. Chapter 6 © Graeme Gill 1980. Chapter 7 ©
A. Kemp-Welch 1980. Chapter 8 ©Archie Brown 1980.
Chapter 9 © Peter Reddaway 1980
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First edition 198o
Reprinted (with alterations) 1!)83
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Authority, power and policy in the USSR
1. Russia-Politics and government- 19 q
- Addresses, essays, lectures
I. Schapiro, Leonard
II. Rigby, Thomas Henry
III. Brown, Archie IV. Reddaway, Peter
32o.9'47'o84 JN6526 1917
ISBN 978-0-333-34672-3 ISBN 978-1-349-06655-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06655-1
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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Contents
Preface to the 1983 Reprint Vll
Preface IX
.Notes on the Contributors XI
1 LEONARD SCHAPIRO AS STUDENT OF SOVIET
POLITICS T. H. Rigby 1
2 A CONCEPTUAL APPROACH TO AUTHORITY,
POWER AND POLICY IN THE SOVIET UNION
T. H. Rigby 9
AUTHORITY, POWER AND THE STATE, 1916-20
3
Neil Harding 32
THE SPARK THAT BECAME A FLAME: THE
4
BOLSHEVIKS, PROPAGANDA AND THE
CINEMA Richard Taylor 57
SOCIALISM, CENTRALISED PLANNING AND
5
THE ONE-PARTY STATE Alec Nove 77
6 POLITICAL MYTH AND STALIN'S QUEST FOR
AUTHORITY IN THE PARTY Graeme Gill g8
STALINISM AND INTELLECTUAL ORDER
7
A. Kemp-Welch 118
8 THE POWER OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY
OF THE CPSU Archie Brown 135
POLICY TOWARDS DISSENT SINCE
9
KHRUSHCHEV Peter Reddaway 158
10 SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
T. H. Rigby 193
Index 198
v
Preface to the g83 Reprint
1
We are happy that demand for this work has been such as to lead
our publisher to reprint in paperback as well as hardcover. The
book appears to have been found useful by students as well as by
specialists and it is good that it will now be more readily accessible.
The main body of the text remains unaltered, for it has not been
necessary to bring it up to date. The combination ofbroad historical
perspectives and more theoretical approaches adopted by the
editors and contributors means that the book retains whatever
relevance it had on first publication. By way, however, of updating
Chapter 8, it is worth mentioning the deaths of two of the leading
figures in Brezhnev's Politburo-in December 1980 of A. N.
Kosygin (who from October of that year had ceased to be Chairman
ofthe Council of Ministers) and injanuary 1982 ofM. A. Suslov
and as an important development relating to Chapter 9, the
removal from Moscow and exile to the city of Gorky in January
1980 of Academician A. D. Sakharov.
1982 T.H.R.
A.H.B.
P.B.R.
VII
Preface
The idea of this book originated in the minds of several former
students of Leonard Schapiro who wished to pay tribute to him on
his seventieth birthday, and in so doing to make their own modest
contributions to knowledge of a subject he has done much to
illuminate. We have not entirely escaped the problems to which
such ventures are prone.
Such has been Professor Schapiro's continued vigour as a scholar
that the editors of this volume awoke rather late in the day to the
fact that he was indeed approaching the landmark of three score
years and ten. A late start, taken in conjunction with delays imposed
by other commitments already undertaken, has meant that the
book is being published closer to his seventy-second birthday than to
his seventieth.
Our second problem was the wide gap between what is these days
a viable length for a Festschrift and the very long list of potential
eager contributors to a volume in honour of Leonard Schapiro. His
friends-and warm admirers of his scholarship-are to be found in
many universities throughout the world. To have invited even a
small proportion of these authors to write a chapter would have
made the volume impossibly large, while at the same time imposing
a highly invidious task of selection upon the editors.
We felt obliged, therefore, to invite contributions only from those
who had been students or colleagues of Leonard Schapiro at the
London School of Economics and Political Science. Even then,
considerations oflength prevented us from asking all those whom we
would have wished to invite, and there were a few scholars who were
unable to accept our invitation because of pressure of other work. In
view, however, of Professor Schapiro's distinguished and devoted
service to the London School of Economics over the past quarter of a
century, the 'LSE connection' is perhaps not an inappropriate one
on which to base this Festschrift.
As should be clear from the writings of the authors of this volume
(both here and elsewhere), Leonard Schapiro's students do not form
IX
Preface
X
a particular school of thought. The present authors, who include
those who share neither Leonard's views on politics nor his views on
political science, are nevertheless united in their admiration for his
achievements as a scholar and teacher. (It is perhaps a special
tribute to anyone in academic life when people of substantially
different political and methodological predispositions recognise the
great value of his work.) If anything else unites the contributors, it is
a respect for, and aspiration to emulate, Leonard Schapiro's
combination of meticulous scholarship with an interest in large and
basic questions about the workings and nature of the Soviet political
system and interpretation of its history.
From one common dilemma of Festschrift editors, we resolved to
be free. Leonard Schapiro's own scholarship has ranged well
beyond Soviet politics and history to (most notably) nineteenth
century Russian literature and social and political thought. A
collection of articles which ranged so widely, without the in
tellectual unity which can be imposed by a single author, would
have been a miscellany rather than a coherent book. Our aim from
the outset, therefore, has been to produce a book which would make
its own distinctive contribution to an understanding of Soviet
politics, concentrating on the central themes of authority, power
and policy which have figured prominently in Leonard Schapiro's
own work.
The one chapter in a different genre from the others is the first-in
which T. H. Rigby writes a brief assessment and appreciation of
Schapiro's contribution to scholarship. A fuller account would have
to speak of his influence as a teacher, particularly through his
lectures and seminars at the LSE, of his role as guest lecturer and
conference participant in many countries, as well as of his services to
numerous academic institutions. Any such account, moreover,
could be no more than a progress report, since Leonard Schapiro
remains an active and highly productive scholar. Yet it is not too
early to express gratitude for his services to scholarship and
enlightenment, and for the personal gifts of his teaching, help and
friendship. This is what we seek to do, in the most appropriate way
we can think of, in this book.
1979 T.H.R.
A. H. B.
P.B.R.
Notes on the Contributors
ARCHIE BROWN, born in Annan, Scotland, in 1938, is a Fellow ofSt
Antony's College, Oxford, and Lecturer in Soviet Institutions at the
University ofOxford. After taking the B.Sc.(Econ.), specialising in
Government, at the London School of Economics and Political
Science from 1959 to 1962, he spent the next two years studying
under Leonard Schapiro's supervision-Russian political and social
thought in the second half of the eighteenth century (in particular,
the thought ofS. E. Desnitsky). From 1964 to 1971, when he moved
to Oxford, he was Lecturer in Politics at Glasgow University. He
has been Visiting Professor of Political Science at Yale University
and at the University of Connecticut and he gave the 1980 Henry L.
Stimson Lectures at Yale. Mr Brown is the author of Soviet Politics
and Political Science ( 19 74) and Political Change within Communist
Systems (forthcoming) and editor of and contributor to The Soviet
Union since the Fall of Khrushchev (with Michael Kaser, 19 75; 2nd edn,
19 78), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (with
Jack Gray, 1977; 2nd edn, 1979), Soviet Policy for the 1¢os (with
Michael Kaser, 1982) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and
the Soviet Union (with john Fennell, Michael Kaser and H. T.
Willetts, 1982).
GRAEME GILL, who was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1947, is
Lecturer in Government at the University of Sydney. After
studying at Monash University (where he took BA and MA
degrees) from 1966 to 1973, he completed under Leonard
Schapiro's supervision at the LSE in 1975 a doctorate on the role of
the peasants in the Russian Revolution. From 1976 he was Tutor
and from 1978 Lecturer in Political Science at the University of
Tasmania before taking up his present appointment at Sydney. Dr
Gill is the author of Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution
(1979)·
NEIL HARDING was born in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, in 1942. He
XI
Xll Notes on the Contributors
graduated in Politics from University College, Swansea, in I963,
and from I 963 to I 965 studied Russian political thought, especially
that of Mikhail Bakunin, under Leonard Schapiro's supervision at
the LSE. Mr Harding has been Lecturer since I965 and Senior
Lecturer since I98o in Politics and Russian Studies at University
College, Swansea. During the I 98 I -2 academic year he was a
Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford. Mr
Harding is the author of Lenin's Political Thought (vol. I, I 977; vol. 2,
I98I) and (with Richard Taylor) of Marxism in Russia: Key
Documents (I 983) and the editor of The State in Socialist Sociery (I 983).
For his study of Lenin's Political Thought, he was awarded the Isaac
Deutscher Memorial Prize for I 98 I -2.
A. KEMP-WELCH was born in Morpeth, Northumberland, in I949·
He studied at the LSE from I967 to I975, taking the B.Sc.(Econ.)
and then a Ph.D. in the Department of Government. His doctoral
thesis on 'The Union of Soviet Writers, I 932-36' was written under
the supervision of Peter Reddaway and Leonard Schapiro. From
I975 until I979 Dr Kemp-Welch was a Research Fellow at St
Antony's College, Oxford, and since I 979 he has been Lecturer in
Politics at the University of Nottingham. He is the translator into
English of the Polish text of the negotiations between workers and
government at Gdansk I 980 and editor of a forthcoming volume
incorporating that translation. He is also the author of Stalin and the
Literary Intelligentsia (forthcoming).
ALEc NovE was born in Petrograd in I9I5 but educated in England.
He was a student at the LSE and took the B.Sc.(Econ.) in I936.
From I947 to I958 he was in the Civil Service (mainly at the Board
ofTrade) and from I958 to I963 he was Reader in Russian Social
and Economic Studies at the University of London (and a colleague
of Leonard Schapiro at the LSE). From I 963 until I 979 he was
Director of the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at
Glasgow University and from I963 until I982 Professor of
Economics at Glasgow. He has been a senior visiting scholar at,
among other institutions, the Russian Institute of Columbia
University, New York; St Antony's College, Oxford; and the
University of Paris. Professor Nove was awarded an honorary
doctorate by the University ofGiessen in I977 and elected a Fellow
of the British Academy in I 978. His publications include The Soviet
Economy (I 96 I; 3rd edn, I 969), Was Stalin Really Necessary? (I 964),