Is the Soviet Present China's Future?

Abstract

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, scholars in the fields of Soviet politics and comparative communism began to reexamine the political and social character of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes in the wake of more than a decade of de-Stalinization. They questioned the validity of the totalitarian model (at least in its more rigid forms) that suggested a static image of politics and society in communist systems, and proposed concepts more cognizant of the dynamic nature of these systems. A prominent theme in much of this literature was that social differentiation resulting from economic development and the emergence of modern industrial society would prove incompatible with continued dictatorial rule by a “vanguard party” following a militant, Utopian ideology. In particular, the rise of a large elite stratum of skilled technical and professional personnel was expected to militate against the long-term viability of a revolutionary regime. Analysts proposed that, under pressure from this group, whose contributions are indispensable to economic growth and development, the party leadership would eventually be compelled to abandon radical social and economic restructuring through revolutions from above in favor of more legal-rational modes of operation, and see its own role as the balancer of the various interests typical of a modern society.