Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
IT IS A GREAT HONOUR TO PROVOKE NOT ONE BUT TWO sustained reactions from Raymond Aron, and I can only hope that his prediction of the initiation of a vaste débat concerning this issue will indeed be fulfilled. For my own part, I have few if any serious disagreements with what he says in his article, notwithstanding the fact that it has the form of a critical examination of my own position. The differences are matters of stress, interpretation and perhaps temperament, rather than genuine disagreements of fact or argument.
1 Cf. also Aron, R., Plaidoyer pour l'Europe décadente, Paris, 1977, pp. 459 et seq.Google Scholar
2 Cf. MacRae, Donald, Ideology and Society, 1961 Google Scholar, Ch. XVI, ‘The Bolshevik Ideology’.
3 A witty exiled dissident, Valentin Turchin, has described this as the ‘bolshevik’ position within the dissident movement. Cf. Inertsiya Strakha (The Inertia of Fear), New York, Kronika Press, 1977, to be published in English by Columbia University Press. See also my review of it in The Times Literary Supplement, 25 November 1977.
4 Cf. Ionescu, G., The Politics of East European Communist States, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967.Google Scholar
5 Cf. Kusín, Vladimir, From Dubček to Charter. Czechoslovakia 1968–78, Edinburgh, Q. Press, 1978.Google Scholar