2 - The closed society in Stalinist state socialism after 1948

Summary

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Central and Eastern European countries obediently copied the Stalinist regime. They all declared the dictatorship of the proletariat and introduced the monolithic party–state political structures. This system, which was “introduced” according to a blueprint, was transplanted from the pages of textbooks into institutional and social reality. The system was constructed on a stringent ideological basis of “Marxism–Leninism” and its Soviet enforcement.

The ideological foundations

From mid nineteenth-century Marxist principles, via turn of the century Leninism, to Stalin's ideological canonization of Soviet practice, a simplified but consistent ideological system was constituted. A brief summary of its conceptual make-up might help to illuminate the aims and characteristics of the foundation of the regime.

The point of departure was the Marxian notion of the development of social formations, which saw mankind as marching from ancient, primitive communism, through the stages of class societies (slavery, feudalism, capitalism), toward an ideal advanced communist society. The engine of progress is the development of the force of production, namely technology and human knowledge. In the first stage of each social formation, the mode of production creates an encouraging environment and impetus for the rapid progress of the force of production, but each social formation reaches its zenith and after that point becomes an obstacle for its further advance.

In class societies, the struggle of the oppressed classes against the ruling class undermines and destroys the obsolete social formation and creates a new one, which again assures subsequent progress. The history of mankind is a history of class struggle. Capitalism, progressive and constructive at its first stage, provided a tremendous impetus to economic development, but at its higher stage, …