Problems of Policy and Political Behavior

Abstract

Stephen Cohen has written an important and, at times, brilliant essay, which is, moreover, a delight to read. It has, I think, the characteristics one has come to associate with his work: freshness, sensitivity, and the courage to tackle the toughest of problems. The criticisms that follow should be read within the context of admiration for a very informative and stimulating study, so rich and nuanced that one despairs of doing justice to its many facets. I am in substantial agreement with most of Professor Cohen's assertions, including his judgments on the outcome of Stalin's, Knrushchev's, and Brezhnev's policies. My criticisms are primarily concerned with matters of method, focus, emphasis, and scope. Professor Cohen attempts nothing less than to capture the meaning of postStalin Soviet politics in terms of a continuum-or rather of the reformist and conservative' points on a continuum-of political attitudes. And, going beyond this difficult endeavor, he also seeks to explain the at least temporary defeat of reformism by conservative forces, especially in the Brezhnev era, by reference to the continued influence of Stalinist traditions on post-Stalin Soviet political culture. Although I perceive a certain inconsistency, or lack of fit, between the emphasis on reformism in the first half of the essay and on conservatism in the second, I find Professor Cohen's typology of attitudes useful. It has enabled him to provide a meaningful order to much data that might otherwise defy analysis. I see certain flaws in his study, however, perhaps partly resulting from failure to realize fully that, despite the significant role that professed attitudes, aspirations, and ideological formulas play in politics, analysis of these features is only one of several necessary approaches to understanding the total political process -a goal that Professor Cohen seems to set for himself in the first few pages of his article. I also have doubts about the empirical underpinnings of Professor Cohen's typology. It is not as clear as it nmight be that it is derived from a sufficiently representative sample of the relevant data. Moreover, I am not sure that the subcategories of the continuum-or parts of the continuum-in terms of which he discusses Soviet political attitudes are mutually exclusive. Thus, as he defines it, conservatism signifies opposition to change, and yet some of the demands to which this label is applied-such as restoration of major features of the tsarist past-would, surely, involve significant change. Now for some details.