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Stalin and the Uses of Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert C. Tucker
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Abstract

THE influence of ideological conceptions upon the men who make Soviet policy has been frequently and rightly emphasized. Some observers are so deeply impressed by this influence that they tend to regard the Soviet system as a kind of ideocracy. It is undeniable that ideology has been one powerful factor in the shaping of Soviet policies and actions from the time of the October Revolution to the present. But one must not lose sight of the fact that, in Soviet Russia, the relationship between ideology and policy is one of mutual interaction. It is a two-way process in which theoretical conceptions affect the making of policy and practical considerations affect the content of the ideology. The ideological system is not a completely static thing. It has evolved over the years, and the realities of Soviet politics have been the driving force behind this evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , July 1956 , pp. 455 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

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12 Ibid., July 1, 1950.

13 For understandable reasons, Teplov failed to add that this task had also not previously been set.

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22 For the sake of historical accuracy, it should be recorded that one N. P. Antonov, a psychologist from die town of Ivanovo, raised a lone and ineffectual voice of protest against diis basic premise. In an article contributed to Voprosy filosofii (No. 1 [1953], p. 197), he wrote: “By attempting to reduce the whole psyche to reflexes, to temporary connections, we are thereby equating the salivation of a dog at the sound of a metronome with the most intricate phenomena of the spiritual life of man, with the conscious activity of people, with the brilliant creations of human intelligence in poetry, art, science, social and political life.” Antonov's article immediately became the object of severe and concerted attack on the part of the other psychologists. But the quoted statement is valuable as an acknowledgment from a Soviet source of the full implications of the neo-Pavlovian trend.

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