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The Evolution in the Soviet World View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jerry F. Hough
Jerry F. Hough
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

Utilizing two editions of a Soviet textbook that was awarded a state prize and termed “the correct orientation” by a Central Committee official, the author analyzes the evolution of the Soviet view of the outside world in the first half of the 1970s. The movement away from ideological rigidity that began in the 1960s continued in the 1970s on a wide range of subjects. In addition, the analysis of the capitalist countries became intertwined with the debate on the future development of Soviet society; a number of features are said to have resulted from the imperatives of industrialization rather than the inner dynamics of capitalism, and hence are in need of adoption by the Soviet Union. The article closes with a brief survey of the issues subsequently raised in the published Soviet debates that continue on either side of the approved, centrist position.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , July 1980 , pp. 509 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

1 Griffiths, Franklyn, “Images, Politics, and Learning in Soviet Behaviour toward the United States,” Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1972)Google Scholar.

2 The announcement of the state prize is found in Pravda, November 6, 1977, p. 3.

3 Inozemtsev, N. N., Mileikovsky, A. G., and Martynov, V. A., eds., Politicheskaia ekonomiia sovremennogo monopolisticheskogo kapitalizma [hereafter referred to as The Political Economy], 2 vols. (1st ed., Moscow: Mysl', 1971; 2d ed., Moscow: Mysl', 1975)Google Scholar. Translations are by the author of this article.

4 Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, No. 26 (June 1977), 10.

5 XX s”ezd kommunisticheskoi partii sovetskogo soiuza, Stenograficheskii otchet [Stenographic Report of the 20th Party Congress] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1956)Google Scholar, I, 323.

6 Arzumanian had been active in Armenia in the early years of the Soviet state and had married the sister of Mikoyan's wife; during World War II, he had had the good fortune to work in the political department of the 18th Army under one of Khrushchev's closest protégés, Leonid I. Brezhnev. Mirovaia ekonomiia i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, No. 5 (May 1974), 118.

7 Besides IMEMO, there were the Institutes for Africa, Oriental Studies, Economy of the World Socialist System, Far East, International Workers' Movement, Latin America, and the USA and Canada. Of these, only the Institute of Oriental Studies had existed at the time of Stalin's death, and in 1956 Mikoyan had said of it, “If the whole East has awakened in our time, this institute still slumbers until the present day.” XX s”ezd (fn. 5), I, 324.

8 , Kovaleva, K voprosam metodologii politicheskoi ekonomii kapitalizma [Toward Questions of the Methodology of the Political Economy of Capitalism] (Moscow: Mysl’, 1969)Google Scholar.

9 Mirovaia ekonomiia i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, No. 1 (January 1970), 124.

10 A Soviet economist reading this is no doubt aware that the percentage of investment going to housing in the Soviet Union dropped from 22.9 percent in 1960 to 13.9 percent in 1976. See Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1965 godu, Statisticheskii sbornik [National Economy of the USSR in 1965, Statistical Handbook] (Moscow: Statistika, 1965), 532Google Scholar, and Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR za 60 let, lubileinyi statisticheskii sbornik [National Economy of the USSR for 60 years, Jubilee Statistical Handbook] (Moscow: Statistika, 1977), 437Google Scholar.

11 These statistics should be treated only as approximate. Aside from the possibility of minor errors due to miscounting, some uses of “imperialism” probably should not have been counted at all because they were quotes from Lenin, or were being used in the Western sense of the term rather than in the Leninist sense. Still, the number of times in which the only change in a sentence is the replacement of “imperialism” by “capitalism” is striking.

12 See, for example, Salychev's participation in a discussion on Social Democrats in Latin America: Latinskaia Amerika, No. 4 (July-August 1978), 95-98, and the response of others (e.g., pp. 143-46).

13 Rabochii klass i sovremennyi mir, No. 3 (May-June 1978), 18-29.

14 Salychev (fn. 12), 96.

15 See, for example, Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No. 5 (1977), 198-99.

16 The general proposition was advanced forcefully in Koval', B. I., Semenov, S. I., and Shul'govsky, A. F., Revoliutsionnye protsessy v Latinskoi Amerike [Revolutionary Processes in Latin America] (Moscow: Nauka, 1974)Google Scholar, but the discussion of political developments has primarily come in a series of published debates in Latinskaia Amerika, esp. No. 4 (fn. 12), 88-146. For a review by I. N. Zorina that spells out some of the differences between Revoliutsionnye protsessy and the IMEMO position, see Latinskaia Amerika, No. 6 (November-December 1975), 196-200. Also see Hough, “The Evolving Soviet Debate on Latin America,” Latin American Research Review (Spring 1981).

17 See, for example, some of the chapters in Iu. Davydov, P., ed., SShA-Zapadnaia Europa: partnerstvo i sopernichestvo [USA-Western Europe: Partnership and Competition] (Moscow: Nauka, 1978)Google Scholar.

18 See Marshall Goldman's report in the New York Times, January 25, 1978, p. 19.

19 For example, the responsible editor for Koval', Semenov, and Shul'govsky (fn. 16) was V. V. Zagladin, deputy head (now first deputy head) of the international department of the Central Committee. One of the most active participants in the debates has been R. A. Ul'ianovsky, deputy head of the international department for the Third World during the 1960s and most of the 1970s. See the conference report in Sovetskpe vostokovedenie, No. 4 (1958), esp. 218 and 222, and particularly the exchange between A. U. Roslavlev (a pseudonym of Ul'ianovsky) and his critics in Rabochii klass i sovremennyi mir, No. 6 (November-December 1974), 103-14; No. 2 (March-April 1975), pp. 136-50; No. 1 (January-February 1977), 136-45. For criticism under his own name, see “O nekotorykh voprosakh marksistsko-leninskoi teorii revoliutsionnogo protsessa” [About some Questions of Marxist-Leninist Theory of the Revolutionary Process], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No. 4 (July-August 1976), 61-82. The article was a response to criticism by N. A. Simoniia; it should be emphasized that it was merely part of the debate rather than an authoritative Central Committee statement. Simoniia received an administrative promotion within two years.

20 See the discussion and quotations in , Hough, “Policy-Making and the Worker,” in Kahan, Arcadius and Ruble, Blair A., eds., Industrial Labor in the U.S.S.R. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), 380Google Scholar.

21 Reisner, Lev I., Razvivayushchiesia strany: ocherk teorii ekonomicheskogo rosta [The Developing Countries: Outline of the Economic Growth Theory] (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 73–104Google Scholar.