Ideology and Soviet Industrialization

298 Pages·1985·8.799 MB·English

by  Timothy W. Luke

Ideology
and Soviet
Industrialization
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Ideology
and Soviet
Industrialization
TIMOTHY W. LUKE
CONTRIBUTIONS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE, NUMBER 120
GREENWOOD PRESS
WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT • LONDON, ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Luke, Timothy W.
Ideology and Soviet industrialization.
(Contributions in political science, ISSN 0147-1066 ;
no. 120)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Work ethic—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—
Industries. 3. Communist ethics. I. Title. II. Series
HD8526.L84 1985 338.0947 84-12812
ISBN 0-313-23831-6 (lib. bdg.)
Copyright © 1985 by Timothy W. Luke
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-12812
1—01
ISBN: 0-313-23831-6 ,
ISSN: 0147-1066
First published in 1985
Greenwood Press
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Copyright Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to use the following:
Extracts from The ABC of Communism by Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii
Preobrazhensky. Permission to reprint given by the Communist Party Li¬
brary, Picture Library & Archive, London.
Extracts from Bolshevik Ideology and the Ethics of Soviet Labor, 1917-1920:
The Formative Years by Frederick I. Kaplan. Copyright 1968 Philosophical
Library Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Extracts from Cultural Revolution in Russia by Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Indi¬
ana University Press. Copyright © 1978 by Indiana University Press. Re¬
printed by permission.
Extracts from The Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Leonard Scha-
piro, Vintage Books. © Copyright 1960, by Leonard Schapiro. Reprinted by
permission of Random House, Inc.
Permission to reprint the Proletkult poem, “The Factory Hooters,” cited in Boris
Thomson, The Premature Revolution: Russian Literature and Society, 1917—
1946, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Ltd. Reprinted by permission.
Extracts reprinted by permission of the Bodley Head Ltd from Industrial
Workers in the USSR, edited by Robert Conquest. Introduction © Robert Con¬
quest, 1967. Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, Inc. 1967.
Extracts from The Lenin Anthology by Robert C. Tucker, ed. Copyright © 1975
by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton
& Company, Inc.
Extracts from Leninism by Alfred G. Meyer, Harvard University Press. © 1957
by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission.
Extracts from The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. by Robert C. Tucker, ed.
Copyright © 1978, 1972 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted by per¬
mission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Extracts from The Mind and Face of Bolshevism by Rene Fiilop-Miller, G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1928. Copyright by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by per¬
mission.
Extracts from The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell.
Copyright George Allen & Unwin, 1964. Reprinted by permission.
Extracts from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max We¬
ber, Charles Scribner’s Sons. © 1958 Charles Scribner’s Sons. Originally pub¬
lished by George Allen & Unwin and reprinted by permission.
Extracts from The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical
Politics by Michael Walzer, Atheneum and Harvard University Press. Copy¬
right © 1965 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by
permission.
Extracts from The Russian Tradition by Tibor Szamuely, McGraw-Hill. Copy¬
right © 1974 Mrs. Nina Szamuely. Reprinted by permission of Martin Seeker
& Warburg, Limited.
Extracts from The Social Prelude to Stalinism by Roger Pethybridge. © Roger
Pethybridge 1974. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, Inc. in the
United States and by The Macmillan Press Ltd. for the rest of the world.
Extracts from Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation by Robert C.
Tucker, ed., W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1977 by Robert C.
Tucker. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Extracts from Technology and Civic Life: Making & Implementing Develop¬
ment Decisions by John D. Montgomery. Copyright © 1974 by the Massachu¬
setts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission.
Extracts from What Is to Be Done? by V. I. Lenin, Foreign Language Press,
Beijing, 1975. Reprinted with permission of China Books & Periodicals, Inc.
Courtesy of Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.
Extracts from Workers Before and After Lenin by Manya Gordon. Copyright
1941 by E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc. and reprinted with their permission.
Extracts from Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in
the Course Of Industrialization by Reinhard Bendix, Harper & Row. Copy¬
right © 1956 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Reinhard Bendix.
For my Parents
and to the memory of my Grandparents
Contents
Preface ix
1. Introduction and Overview 3
2. The Revolutionary Russian Intelligentsia:
A Surrogate Bourgeoisie 43
3. Bolshevism as Civil Religion 73
4. The Socialist Work Ethic and the Working Class 111
5. Bolshevism and the Modern Popular Reformation 143
6. The Stalin Revolution 185
7. Conclusion 217
Bibliography 259
Index 279
V
Preface
In the social sciences, works of research usually fit into one of
two categories of analysis. On the one hand, there are very
specialized studies that uncover fresh evidence or generate new
data. And, on the other hand, there are broad interpretative
investigations suggesting that existing bodies of evidence and
familiar problems should be viewed in an alternative perspec¬
tive. In large part, this analysis of Soviet industrialization is
of the latter type.
This study engages in some unorthodox conceptual experi¬
mentation by extending Max Weber’s interpretation of the for¬
mation of a capitalist work ethic, which he elaborates in The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, to account for
the genesis of a socialist work ethic in the Soviet Union. Fol¬
lowing Weber’s example, then, this analysis of the politics of
industrialization in the Soviet Union is an exercise in histor¬
ical social theory and political sociology. The basic perspec¬
tives employed in this investigation are those of a compara¬
tive politics generalist, grounded in the traditions of critical
political economy, rather than those of a Slavic area studies
specialist. The aim of this analysis is to compare and contrast
the capitalist and socialist experience at forming an industrial
ethic of work performance to make some tentative generali¬
zations about the role of ideology and class in developing in¬
dustrial values. By drawing parallels between or pointing to
contradictions within the European capitalist and the Soviet