Testing the Soviet Reality

...And, at home, according to Brzezinski...

...But Brzezinski forcefully rejects the predictions of such men as Isaac Deutscher that industrial maturation will lead to political democracy...

...Their unifying theme is, as the title indicates, the interrelationship of power and ideology in Soviet politics...

...The author...

...He comes close to suggesting that Lenin did not behave as Stalin merely because of the tactical exigencies of the moment, and that Stalinism was the sole "logical" outgrowth of Leninism...

...Director of Columbia University's Research Institute on Communist Affairs, poses two basic questions, which might be phrased as follows: What distinctive features has their ideology given to the Soviet rulers' pursuit of power...

...Considered separately, the essays are almost without exception of unusually high quality...

...They have not achieved the sort of total power that they seek, but at the same time, the obstacles they have encountered up to the present day have not been so great as to compel them to abandon their quest or to erode the ideological zeal behind it...

...He contends that their ideology has involved the Soviet rulers in a quest for total power and led them to attempt to overcome all restraints on their power, whether derived from the independence of institutions, the autonomy of voluntary associations, or even the privacy of primary groups such as the family...

...Power is now available to overcome "spontaneity" and yet "spontaneity" persists...

...Nor have they been forced to do so...

...Finally, while the "camp of Socialism" has expanded, currents of diversity have appeared within it which tend to call into question the theory of a uniform and monolithic Socialist developmental pattern...

...4.50 Reviewed by JEREMY R. AZRAEL Russian Research Center, Harvard University Although the five essays contained in this collection were written separately over the course of a number of years, they form a remarkably cohesive whole...

...no reader interested in Soviet politics could hope to find a more challenging 180 pages...

...One wishes that Brzezinski had elaborated his methodological approach in greater detail, but he has made an important beginning which should inspire others to mine this rich vein further...

...There are powerful liberalizing currents in Soviet society as well as still powerful forces of tradition, and, given a decline in revolutionary zeal and the development of a status quo orientation on the part of the leadership, these would prove more difficult to control than Brzezinski suspects...

...The main outlines of Brzezinski's approach to these two questions can be stated rather simply, though it is by no means a simple approach...

...once the job of uprooting traditional loyalties and behavior patterns is well launched, and once totalitarian indoctrination and education have had time to penetrate, terror is no longer indispensable...

...And while colonial revolutions have occurred, they have given rise to new nations which are difficult to fit into the dichotomous image of the world that is inherent in the ideology...

...successes" predominated...

...Finally, he argues that the relegation of terror to the background is no guarantee of liberty...

...he argues, historically unprecedented (though in the contemporary period it has animated the Nazis, Fascists and Chinese Communists as well as the Bolsheviks), and must not be viewed merely as a product of modern technology harnessed to traditional autocratic ambition...

...He renders great service in attacking the prevalent view that industrial maturation is a precursor of political democracy, but he goes too far to the other extreme...

...He acknowledges, too, that the same process has tended to infuse the status hierarchy inherent in modern production with "class content" and hence to generate patterns of social solidarity and antagonism which are not wholly amenable to controlled manipulation...

...Prior to World War II, the Soviet rulers were largely powerless to force developments outside their immediate domain to conform to ideological expectations, and the "spontaneous" course of developments was such as to compel them to undertake major ideological revisions...

...He recognizes that this process has led to terror becoming increasingly costly in economic terms and has created a managerial elite which is technocratically oriented and inclined to be restive at all-pervasive political control and perpetual mobilization...

...It should dissolve once and for all the myth of Khrushchev as the ideologically indifferent pragmatist...

...He then goes on to suggest that a rigid system of social stratification does not automatically give rise to social pluralism and pressures for the toleration of diversity...

...Moreover, capitalism is now possessed of weapons systems which make it less likely that its collapse will be, as the ideology predicts it should, coterminous with the victory of Socialism...

...He attacks the notion that a technocratic orientation inevitably leads to demands for political liberty or even for a meaningful voice in political decision-making, citing Nazi Germany as evidence...

...In the end Brzezinski doubts that the obstacles to power the Soviet rulers are encountering, now that they are actively engaged in international relations, will lead to ideological erosion in the near future...

...Still, he finds it noteworthy that the Kremlin has shown some signs of legitimizing these obstacles (e.g., in the doctrines of "peaceful coexistence" and "separate roads to Socialism"), which is more than it has ever done with those it encountered on the domestic scene...

...Collectively, the essays make an important contribution to the study of Soviet politics through the methodological approach which informs and unites them...

...In many respects, it is true, recent international developments have proceeded according to Soviet ideological expectations, but there are important qualifications...

...Certainly, the gap between expectation and reality is no more extreme today than it was during the period when the Soviet Union was relatively powerless on the world stage...

...The fact that the gap is associated with greater Soviet power and a presumptive possibility (which the ideology turns into an almost compulsive necessity) of acting purposively, rather than merely responsively in foreign affairs, makes it harder to explain away...

...It suggests insights into the dynamics of Soviet politics that are fated to be missed by those who view power and ideology as absolute dichotomies, and insist on arguing about whether the Soviet rulers are "genuine" Marxist-Leninists or pure realpoliticians...

...This can always be explained in terms of a continued insufficiency of power, but, when the Soviet Union is one of the two most powerful countries in the world, the explanation has an unprecedentedly hollow ring...

...As proof, the author points to the relative ease with which Premier Khrushchev has been able to curtail the power of the secret police, undermine the institutional bases of the power of the managers, rebuff the demands of the military professionals, restrict the scope of private farming, pose the possibility of reducing the family to purely biological functions, etc...

...Brzezinski argues, however, that it is more ideologically threatening...

...The strongest of the essays is the third, "The Nature of the Soviet System," which contains what is probably the most lucid short analysis of the politics of the Khrushchev era available today...

...This quest for total power is...

...The first essay, "Totalitarianism and Rationality," strikes me as the weakest...

...Looking to the future, Brzezinski sees the potentially greatest domestic challenge to the aspirations of the Soviet rulers in the process of industrial maturation...

...In addition, Brzezinski's assessment of the likelihood of the Soviet Union becoming a technocratic despotism ("rational totalitarianism"), were ideological erosion to occur, is open to argument...

...The most nearly insurmountable obstacles which the Soviet leadership has faced are in the area of international affairs...

...Reality was made to conform to ideological expectations through the application of purposeful (and violent) action...

...Brzezinski's view that the Leninist period in Soviet history was but a "stage" in an on-going quest for total power seems at least questionable...

...Through such policies as collectivization and rapid industrialization and the terror which accompanied them, the Soviet rulers were able to overcome almost all limits on their power and achieve the "institutionalization of revolutionary zeal" which they sought, thus reinforcing ideological commitment and buttressing it with institutional loyalties...

...All these measures, Brzezinski believes, indicate that the assault on institutional, societal and personal restraints on power and the quest for total power go on...

...The traditional autocrats, including the Russian Tsars, recognized the legitimacy of at least some limits on their power...

...And has the pursuit of power led the Soviet leaders into contact with realities sufficiently resistant to ideologically inspired action to set in motion a process of ideological erosion...

...The concept of "reality testing" applied to the analysis of the interrelationship of power and ideology in political behavior seems to me particularly fruitful...

...In sum...

...Hopefully, this condensation and systematization of Brzezinski's argument demonstrates the breadth of the material and the importance of the problems dealt with in Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics...

...Their implementation indicates that Khrushchev is not alone in seeking to consolidate a totalitarian political system, and also that the forces of "routinization" in the USSR are still so weak and Soviet society still so malleable that confrontation with domestic realities is unlikely to produce ideological erosion...

...Confrontation with international realities, according to Brzezinski, is somewhat more likely to do so...

...Second, the very fact of relative Soviet powerlessncss on the world stage served to make international developments less ideologically relevant, since the ideology itself does not postulate confirmation through "spontaneity" but only through "consciousness"— i.e., through purposeful action, which, in the circumstances, was almost impossible...

...In the first place, despite the "obduracy" of the external environment, international developments were not wholly incongruent with ideological expectations...

...These revisions, however, neither transformed the ideology into a mere faith irrelevant to policy, nor did they result in serious ideological erosion...

...The Soviet rulers, according to Brzezinski, are prepared to recognize no limits as legitimate...

...Third, domestic "successes" made it relatively easy for the Soviet rulers to ignore and rationalize foreign policy "failures...

...While the power of the "capitalist" world has declined relative to that of the "Socialist" world, the former has shown a curious resilience...