Revolutionary Dynamics Research Articles

The Brezhnev Doctrine and Communist Ideology

Announcement of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine by Soviet spokesmen in 1968 has been widely regarded in the West as a development marking a new epoch in the evolution of the world communist system. The Doctrine has been commonly viewed as a Soviet response to the exigencies of Great Power politics in circumstances of continuing loss of revolutionary dynamism or as a reaction to the threat to Soviet hegemony in its inner bloc posed by uncontained polycentrism, or both. Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “limited sovereignty,” with this concept being treated as the heart of the Doctrine and as evidence of a major new departure in the Soviet approach to world politics. This assessment, interestingly enough, is generally favored both by Western analysts and by anti-Soviet spokesmen within the world communist system.

A "Journée" in the Making: May 15, 1848

Previous articleNext article No AccessA "Journée" in the Making: May 15, 1848Peter AmannPeter Amann Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 42, Number 1Mar., 1970 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/240515 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1970 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Question of Totalitarianism

Professor Brzezinski's paper moves along a number of planes of discourse. Some of it is describable as general theory of modern dictatorship, some as analysis of a particular political order, that of Russia, and some as discussion of current Russian political affairs and tendencies. In these necessarily rather brief remarks, I shall be concerned chiefly with issues that arise under first two headings. In Section I, where notion of totalitarianism is expounded as a comprehensive conceptual key to nature of Soviet and other like systems (presumably both Communist and Fascist), Professor Brzezinski stresses difference in kind between or old-fashioned dictatorship and modern totalitarian dictatorship. The nub of difference is that traditional dictatorships tended to be whereas modern totalitarian ones are dynamic and revolutionary, recognize no limits to extension of their throughout society, and have an organizational to ideology-action. In passing I must observe that idea of an organizational remains obscure to me, for a compulsion seems to be a psychological force or condition that has its locus in individual human beings rather than in organizations or movements. For same reason, I am troubled by such a phrase as the movement's dynamic need to subordinate society wholly to its power (italics added). The distinction between traditional conservative and modern revolutionary dictatorship is familiar and has its uses. But historian, and particularly Russian historian, may well demur. Although Russian Tsarism did become a generally conservative, change-resistant political force during greater part of nineteenth century, especially towards its close, Tsarism had shown a great and at times a positively revolutionary dynamism during much of its earlier career from fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Kovalevsky, for example, calls Peter I the greatest of Russian revolutionists,1 quite correctly suggesting by this phrase that Peter was not only tsar-revolutionary. In general Tsarist autocracy emerged in Muscovy as a dynamic political organization that carried out, occasionally by forcible means