The Soviet representative system at the crossroads: Towards political representation?

Abstract

In the past few years, representation has emerged as a central theme in Soviet public debate on the ‘reform of the political system’. The system of representation that developed over recent decades has come under strong criticism. Functionally, it suited the non‐elective, non‐competitive nature of the Soviet one‐party regime perfectly. Conceptually, it had deep roots in Marxist‐Leninist ideology and was inspired by an ‘ideal model’ of social representation as opposed to the model of party‐political representation which is characteristic of Western democracies. Analysis of the Soviet representative system at local level reveals that, notwithstanding the recent introduction of contested elections and the development of an embryonic multi‐party system, serious obstacles of a political and ideological nature still remain as impediments to the full establishment of the concept and institutional mechanisms of liberal‐democratic political representation.