Criticism from Within

...Medvedev admires his country's accomplishments despite what he regards as Stalin's perversion of Leninism—the subject of his earlier, widely acclaimed study, Let History Judge...

...For while most of his fellow dissidents long ago gave up all hope of reforming the Soviet regime, Medvedev still believes this can be done from within...

...His dwelling on the superior Western achievement is not likely to persuade even the ideal enlightened apparatchik that a thorough overhaul of the Soviet system is imperative...

...In fact, he sees no desirable alternative...

...The Prague leaders, spokesmen for an oppressed small nation, called for change in the name of freedom: Ideological and messianic, they aimed at a "Socialism with a human face...

...He is convinced that "objective" forces—the Marxist substitute for God—favor such a development...

...Reviewed by Vojtech Mastny Associate Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign A critic of Roy Medvedev's cast could only be considered a black sheep in a country as narrowly conservative as the Soviet Union...

...At the heart of the matter, of course, is the question of how this program is to be accomplished over the opposition of the entrenched ruling officialdom...

...In this book he looks ahead and warns that the Soviet State resembles an edifice growing ever taller, yet resting on "antiquated, decayed, even rotten foundations.' On Socialist Democracy then explores how these foundations must be repaired to meet the demands of the computer age...

...Moreover, as long as that disarray persists, one may expect the ascendancy not of the kind of Soviet rulers Medvedev so valiantly desires, but rather of those the West feels least comfortable with...

...Medvedev contends that if "the peculiar nature of bureaucracy" is respected and "the political struggle is waged responsibly in forms that reasonable people can accept,'' a sympathetic alliance representing "the best of the intelligentsia" and the most enlightened of the apparatchiks will come to power...

...The Russian author, proud of being a citizen of the leading Communist State, is concerned with greater efficiency: A practical empiricist, he wants to modernize a backward society to make it more competitive...

...One of Medvedev's friends has observed sardonically that "his ideas are harmful because they create illusions about the ease with which the reform can be realized.' Indeed, since this book first appeared abroad in 1972, many of its arguments have been undermined, particularly in the light of the economic confusion in the capitalist world that the author did not anticipate...

...But there are important differences between the two approaches...

...He advocates freedom of discussion, genuine election of public officials, institutional guarantees of dissent, and other landmarks of pluralism, although not the abolition of the one-party system...

...elsewhere he might be thought of as a defender of the Establishment...

...The exercise is reminiscent of the Czechoslovak reformers' effort in 1968 to reconcile Communism with the future...

...And he favors limited private enterprise within a regulated economy...

...High on the list of his priorities, too, is an expansion of the rights of the Soviet Union's component republics in the direction of true federalism...

...A Marxist in the mold of Western European Communists, whose judgments he often invokes, he rejects Social Democracy and nationalism, liberalism and religion, Old Russia and the New Left...

...Medvedev's program is primarily political and, to be sure, would result in a significantly freer society than the USSR has now...