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, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser 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),