From a dictatorship of the proletariat to a state of the whole people (original) (raw)

1979, Studies in Soviet Thought

On June 4, 1977, the Soviet Union published the draft of its new Constitution and proclaimed in Article I that "the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of the whole people...". 1 Such was the first constitutional expression of this politico-ideological phenomenon and capped the work begun in October, 1961 at the XXIInd Party Congress of the CPSU. The roots of this issue, however, were established as early as 1956 and were subsequently covered by mounds of theory. In reality, though, their foundation appears to be of a very political texture, grounded in the post-Stalin leadership of the Soviet Union. Traditionally, the Soviet leadership has been composed of two fundamental groups, which, themselves, may be broken down into a number of subgroups, reflecting varying ages, backgrounds, and affiliations. The first of these two groups deals in the realm of politics and is made up of the Soviet politiki, the men in the system whose principal aim is action. In contrast, the primary concern of the second group is theory. The men in this group are the party 'ideologues', specialists in propaganda and doctrinal matters. They are the men of thought. The relations arising within and between these groups, however, are not as simple as this picture seems to indicate. In fact, they are often highly complex and are intimately related with decision-making. It will therefore be my task to examine these relations with regard to the Soviet leadership of the late fifties and early sixties and to investigate their role in the decision to introduce into Communist ideology the concept of an 'all people's state'. My hypothesis will be that, in making this decision, political considerations far outweighed those of a theoretical nature, thus grounding the state of the whole people not in theory, but in politics. Writing in his 'Critique of the Gotha Program' in May, 1875, Marx clearly established what he envisioned the state to be in the transitory socialist period leading to Communism. To him there was no question that the state would wither away once full Communism had been achieved. However, "between capitalist and Communist society", he wrote, "lies the period of the revolutionary transformation from one to the other. There also corresponds to this