Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship

284 Pages·1954·8.055 MB·English

by  Barrington Moore Jr.

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THE RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER
The Russian Research Center was established February 1, 1948. It is supported by the
Carnegie Corporation on α grant covering the period until July 1, 1958. The major ob-
jective of the Research Center is the study of Russian institutions and behavior in an
effort to make for better understanding of international actions and policy of the Soviet
Union. The participating scholars represent all of the social sciences. In accord with the
expressed wish of the Carnegie Corporation, the fields of anthropology, psychology,
and sociology, which have hitherto played little part in Russian studies in this country,
are strongly represented. The stafF of the Center are grateful to the Carnegie Corpora-
tion not only for the opportunity to carry out their studies under favorable circum-
stances, but also for the moral encouragement and intellectual stimulation which hove
been provided by contact with individual officers and trustees of the Corporation.
RUSSIAN RESEARCH CENTER STUDIES
1. Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A 8. Soviet Opposition to Stalin: A Case
Study in Mass Persuasion, by Alex Study in World War II, by George
Inkeles Fischer
2. Soviet Politics—The Dilemma of Pow- 9. Minerals: A Key to Soviet Power, by
er: The Role of Ideas in Social Change, Demitri B. Shimkin
by Barrington Moore, Jr. 10. Soviet Law in Action: The Recollected
3. Justice in Russia: An Interpretation of Cases of a Soviet Lawyer, by Har-
Soviet Law, by Harold J. Berman old J. Berman and Boris A. Kon-
4. Chinese Communism and the Rise of stantinovsky
Mao, by Benjamin I. Schwartz 11. How Russia Is Ruled, by Merle Fain-
5. Titoism and the Cominform, by Adam sod
Ulam 12. Terror and Progress USSR: Some
6. Documentary History of Chinese Com- Sources of Change and Stability in
munism, by Conrad Brandt, Benjamin the Soviet Dictatorship, by Barring-
Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank ton Moore, Jr.
7. The New Man in Soviet Psychology,
by Raymond A. Bauer
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USSR
TERROR AND PROGRESS
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TERROR
AND
PROGRESS U S SR
SOME SOURCES OF CHANGE AND
STABILITY IN THE SOVIET DICTATORSHIP
Barrington Moore, Jr.
τ 954
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS · CAMBRIDGE
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Copyright, 1954, By the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Distributed in Great Britain by
GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE
Oxford University Press
London
This volume was prepared under α grant from the Carnegie Cor-
poration of New York. That Corporation is not, however, the
author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication and is
not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of
the statements made or views expressed therein.
library of Congress Catalog Card Number 54-5995
Printed in the United States of America
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To E. С. M.
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PREFACE
At the outset it must be confessed that the aim of this study is a
rash one. It is an attempt to weigh, with an eye to the future, the
sources of stability and the potentialities for change in the Bol-
shevik regime. Unquestionably my performance has fallen short
of this goal, which many thoughtful scholars would regard as es-
sentially a foolish one. To be sure, the results of a search for fu-
ture developments in the Soviet Union cannot be set down with
the assurance, precision, and colorful language of The Farmers
Almanac. Yet I hope that the following pages may be distin-
guished from this venerable document on certain additional
grounds. There are enough clear signs of strength and identifiable
spores of weakness in crucial parts of Soviet society so that one
can discern rough outlines of possible future developments. To
locate these points and assess them is a challenging and exciting
task. This book is therefore mainly an exploratory foray, marked
by some of the dangers and risks of such adventures. There is no
shining definite pot of gold at the end of our search, but the
reader himself can best judge from the conclusions whether or
not the efiFort was worth while.
The organizing principle with which this study began was one
of showing the kinds of situation that confront different people
in Soviet society, the ways in which they see their situation and
respond to it, and how their behavior sometimes modifies and
sometimes perpetuates it. Instead of writing a treatment of the
Soviet system with the conventional categories of politics, eco-
nomics, the family, and the rest, I wanted to see what could be
accomplished by viewing it in terms of a series of situations and
a series of people, from the factory worker on the assembly line
to the leaders in the Kremlin. By noting how the situations are
related to one another, one can locate at least some of the major
sources of internal strain and stability in Soviet society, as in any
other. In the same fashion, external factors which affect the situa-
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χ PREFACE
tíons facing various people in the society can be taken into ac-
count.
Though this principle of organization was necessarily modified
considerably as the work progressed, much of it remains. The
first chapter introduces the reader to those who manipulate the
control levers in Soviet society and the problems that confront
them. The second carries this theme somewhat further by show-
ing how some of the levers work in industry, and the significance
of the counterpressures that are generated as the machinery of
leadership grinds against the demands and desires of the popu-
lation. A third chapter focuses on the peasants' reactions to this
machinery and some of the problems that their response creates
for the Communist leadership. Since intellectuals are often a
source of change and innovation in modern industrial society, the
next two chapters are devoted to the position of the scientist and
the creative artist in Soviet society. There follows, in Chapter 6,
an appraisal of organized terror, a major factor that plays an
important part in the life of nearly every Soviet citizen. Here I
have also discussed the much debated question of whether or not
socialism inevitably requires terror as one of its major instru-
ments.
While each of the above chapters sheds some light, I hope, on
specific aspects of the problem of change and stability in the
Soviet dictatorship, the final chapter tries to assess the clues we
have found and to explore what meaning they might have for the
future. Inevitably the position one takes in attacking such a
problem depends partly on one's underlying philosophical as-
sumptions. Without defending them here, I shall merely try to
make them explicit.
At any given moment in time, it seems to me, some future de-
velopments are such remote possibilities that practical men are
justified in calling them impossible. On the other hand, other fu-
ture events are so probable as to be nearly inevitable. In between
lies the range of effective human action. It has been well argued
of late that social scientists have put too much emphasis on pre-
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