REVIEWS

...But, except for a handful of economists, it has been singularly barren of significant contributions to our understanding of Soviet politics and society...

...While he does not define it, it presumably stands for a syndrome of policies, values, and institutions that is sufficiently distinct to deserve a label other than "Soviet," "authoritarian," or "one-party state with a central command economy...

...He goes to considerable lengths to show how Stalin's name and at least part of his record have crept back into current parlance and historiography...

...Zaslaysky's work is particularly good in dealing with the mechanisms of social control available to the regime...

...But it may be misleading to focus so heavily on these questions in discussing Zaslaysky's six essays...

...One of the distinguishing marks of the Soviet-type system is, after all, the ability of actors in the political arena to override socio-economic pressures and to dictate priorities free of class or group interests...

...But this is not the sense in which Zaslaysky (and not he alone) uses the term "neo-Stalinist...

...and in particular, domestic discipline need by no means require foreign adventurism...

...This volume—a collection of essays—marks him as an able sociologist...

...Since the use of the term "neo-Stalinism" seems to be gaining currency, even in serious works, its appropriateness may deserve a brief discussion...

...This second formula would be sold to the leadership by a technocratic elite: economic pluralism as a way of forestalling pressures for political pluralism...

...Zaslaysky does in fact deal with a number of these disputes, and Seweryn Bialer has given a fine summary of them in his book Stalin's Successors...

...There are those—be they Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Richard Pipes—who see the Soviet era as essentially homogeneous...

...as a "neoStalinist state" and also attach the label of neoStalinism to one of the two most likely alternatives that he sees lying ahead...

...By the same token, the rehabilitation of Stalin (an exaggeration, in any event) need not entail neo-Stalinism...

...The question that remains unanswered, here or elsewhere, is what significant changes in economic policy and practice could be implemented in the Soviet Union, regardless of pressures imposed from abroad...

...If there is a label that would describe much of the domestic policy of the Brezhnev years and apparently also under Chernenko, it is "muddling through," rather than either of Zaslaysky's prescriptions...

...Richard Pipes claims to believe that U.S...

...If neo-Stalinism is an objective social category, you could have it anywhere, without invoking Stalin's name...

...All the more surprising then to have him describe the U.S.S.R...

...This 134 leads him to focus very usefully on such devices as the internal-passport system and the institution of "closed cities"—the most desirable centers, where residence is tightly (if somewhat ineffectively) controlled— and other instances of socioeconomic stratification...

...But even if one accepts the hypothesis that it has a diffuse legitimacy in the minds of most Soviet citizens, the question remains how the authorities manipulate opinion and behavior through a combination of differential controls and rewards aimed at different groups and strata of the population...

...The result of even the milder version, which the current Administration has sought to implement, is a tightening up in the Soviet Union: U.S...

...We have, one hopes, advanced beyond the notion that the Soviet system survives primarily by reliance on coercion...

...Zaslaysky's familiarity with Marxist categories enables him to look for the socioeconomic roots of political behavior for the groups he examines...

...that efforts at tightening law and order at home would require expansionism abroad is a very different and, I believe, misleading assumption...

...Here Victor Zaslaysky, who previously taught in Leningrad and now teaches in Canada, is a welcome exception...

...As Zaslaysky posits the choices, they are between (1) a "neo-Stalinist" policy of law and order cou135 pled with political expansionism and a lowering of living standards for Soviet workers and peasants...

...It becomes all too easy to charge "professional anti-Stalinists" with ideological fanaticism, to redefine the purges as administrative zealotry and occasional incompetence, and to move toward a measure of rehabilitation of Stalinism among decent and honest people...

...THE OTHER MAJOR PROBLEM that requires comment is the prospect ahead for Soviet society (or, more precisely, for the relationship of state and society...

...At its best, his work makes original contributions...

...While these papers are primarily for the specialist, the layman can profit from reading Zaslaysky on such matters as the status of the Soviet working class and differentiations within it, and the pattern of ethnic tensions...

...There is another reason to avoid using the Stalinist label when speaking of the present U.S.S.R., and that is to avoid that minimizing of the difference between the 1930s and the 1980s, which has become rather fashionable for some self-styled revisionists here and abroad...

...Of late, a thoroughly misleading notion has been propounded by a number of people who ought to know better: that the nature of the Soviet system and especially its failures at home organically drive it to expand, if only to validate its legitimacy and to manufacture the enemies it needs to justify its regime...

...But this scarcely proves his point...

...If this is so, then—unless neo-Stalinism is defined for us in some novel way—it is misleading to use this label for today's Soviet Union...

...This effort will require substantive rebuttal, but it is well to avoid any terminological legerdemain that would make it easier to confuse 1948 with 1984...

...Other papers deal with the special status and privileges of workers at so-called closed enterprises, and with differences among different age and social groups in their reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968...

...feel safer...

...Surprisingly then, given the care and detachment of Zaslaysky's work, one must conclude that his use of the label neo-Stalinism is either inaccurate or loaded, or both...

...More important perhaps, as suggested earlier, law and order need not mean Stalinist terror...

...And one would be hardpressed to invent a credible scenario in which a member of the Politburo, after reciting a litany of problems, shortfalls, bottlenecks, and worries, would appeal to his fellow-members, " . and therefore, comrades, let us invade Afghanistan [or Ethiopia, or Pakistan...

...Yet, if there are any defining characteristics of Stalinism, they are bound to include, among others, (1) a Stalin, by whatever name, and (2) arbitrary mass terror...

...He tries valiantly, but at least this reader remains skeptical...

...The recent, "third" wave of emigres from the Soviet Union has produced a wealth of valuable memoirs and works of fiction...

...and (2) a "technocratic" orientation that in effect focuses on economic reforms as a way out of the current stagnation...

...Ironically, if Soviet policy has helped Ronald Reagan, he in turn has helped the Soviet leaders consolidate and dig in...

...Clever perhaps...

...Western readers, depressed by accounts of survivors, are apt to forget that the labor camps no longer exist as a mass institution to deal with political prisoners, even if some of the recent cases are scandalous and incompatible with our standards of justice...

...policy in the 1980s has tended to worsen the prospects of reform in the Soviet Union significantly (just as in the 1970s détente had made reforms more feasible in Eastern Europe...

...Moreover, the upsurge and decline of dissent in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and '70s can readily be related to political decisions (such as the end of mass terror under Khrushchev) or even to trends abroad (the waves of protest in the West, particularly among university youth), but not to stages of socioeconomic development or the definition of self-interest by particular groups in the Soviet Union...

...There are other significant changes that distinguish the Stalin years from more recent phases, for instance, the nature of elite politics and decisionmaking, the altered priorities in resource allocation, the scope of contacts with the outside world, or the toleration of some policy disputes...

...Leaving aside Zaslaysky's effort to find a "class base" for these two prescriptions, one can only welcome his good sense in omitting at least two prospects that, in recent years, others have taken seriously: the internal collapse of the system, and its far-reaching political democratization...

...In fact, the record suggests that in the periods of greatest difficulties at home (for example, 1921, 1930, 1937, 1953) Soviet foreign policy has tended to be relatively conciliatory...

...ZASLAVSKY DOES WELL in recognizing and stressing some of the significant changes that have occurred in the Soviet Union since (and perhaps thanks to) Stalin's death in 1953...

...There are no serious grounds to foresee either of these...

...When they describe the present Soviet Union as Stalinist, they are essentially stressing the elements of continuity...

...But what about those that Zaslaysky sketches out...

...Zaslaysky's general outlook also leads him to search for an "objective" basis for all political differences and, in effect, for elements of a class conflict in the Soviet Union...

...While it may be useful analytically to describe them as "ideal types," in fact they are neither exhaustive alternatives nor mutually exclusive...

...Zaslaysky's discussion does not deal with the possible impact of external variables...

...If they have no obvious political bottom line, and if some of them are open to argument, they are nonetheless serious, original, and very welcome in a field that badly needs some new skilled and careful craftsmen...

...That foreign adventures might require greater sacrifices at home is one thing...

...Andropov, on the other hand, sought to combine elements of both greater social discipline and modest economic reform from above...

...To them, there is no sharp break between Lenin and Stalin, even less between Leninism and Stalinism, nor any qualitative change from the Stalin era to the years that followed...

...pressure can force the Soviets to make fundamental changes in resource allocation and thereby to shift from a heavily militarized economy to one far more concerned with consumer goods (which would make the U.S...

...but in fact such a strategy is naive and impossible...

...Whatever else, there is mercifully no Stalin in sight, and a return to Stalinist mass terror is one of the least likely prospects...