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THE SOVIET SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
THE SOVIET SYSTEM
OF GOVERNMENT
FIFTH EDITION, Revised
JOHN HAZARD
N.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO & LONDON
The University ofChicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University ofChicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1957, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1980 by The University ofChicago
All rights reserved. Published 1957
Fifth Edition Revised 1980
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
ISBN: 0-226-32193-2 (clothbound) 0-226-32194-0 (paperbound)
LCN: 79-16827
87 86 85 84 83 82 81 80 54321
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION
Communists believe in the efficacy of institutions. With them
they expect to be able to restructure society to foster the values
they have chosen to respect. While all activists show confidence
in institutions as a means ofachieving what they have come to
idealize as a good society, the Communists ofthe Soviet Union
declare that their attitude toward institutions is qualitatively
different from attitudes in the non-Communist world. Their task
is to create a new society, new in every way. They have no
intention ofprotecting a long-established nineteenth-century so-
cial structure. They expect to experience the need to try various
political experiments, but these will always be related to
achievement oftheir predetermined goal. There is no desire to
explore various goals through experimentation; onlyto search for
appropriate institutions likely to help them achieve a goal of
whose desirability they have no doubts.
This book focuses on institutions, institutions manipulated by
the avowed Marxists ofthe Soviet Union to achieve the goal they
call communism. In spite of their declared intention to break
completely with the past in creating a new society, history has
shown that no people has ever succeeded in making such a sud-
den break. There is always a past in history which makes itself
felt, and Russian history provides no exception. Soviet in-
stitutions, although designed to create a new type of society,
were notconceived on a blank page on the night ofNovember 7,
1917, when the Winter Palace in Petrograd fell. The institutions
which the Communist leader, V. I. Lenin, chose to use for gov-
erning when his party and its political partners seized power
were already in place. The structure of the new state, the
"soviet," was already meetingin the capital, ready to become the
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION
vi
symbol legitimating the new regime with the working masses.
The Communist leadership already had its disciplined activist
instrument of guidance, tempered in the revolutionary struggle
that had been seething since the turn ofthe century.
The decades during which the Soviets and the Communist
party had matured had been important in creating attitudes to-
ward a desirable form of government. These attitudes had be-
come so fixed in the minds ofthose who led, thatexperts helping
to draft the first Constitution of 1918 were unable to persuade
those leaders even to consider alternate forms of government.
History had left its imprint, and the soviet system, as it had
evolved duringthe years ofrevolution, became fixed in the basic
law.
Sixty-odd years ofexperience since 1917 have notchanged the
leadership's determination to preserve the Communistparty and
its mass arm, the Soviets. Although sharp criticism is leveled at
times atpastmistakes, the dominantcontemporary sovietleaders
show no desire to abandon their governmental structures to try
something new. This conservative attitude helps to explain the
new U.S.S.R. Constitution ofOctober 7, 1977. Its major effect is
preservation of the well-established forms which have devel-
oped since 1917. The Constitution does for the state apparatus
what revision of the Communist party rules did for the party
structures in 1966: itreaffirms the determinationto avoidchange.
Readers may ask why Soviet leaders now sense the need to
reaffirm structures in a new Constitution. Why was it not desir-
able to continue in force the 1936 Constitution, reserving for
later years any updating that might be necessary to meet unex-
pected events as the last decades of the twentieth century un-
fold? It is expected to be a period of great change, with the
introduction into the Soviet economy of the scientific and
technological revolution; a period when political change can be
expectedto follow economicchange. The answertothis question
is not easy to find, primarily because the Communist party has
succeeded over many years in keeping secret from the West the
policy debates that occur within it. Westerners do not know for
certain what groupings or factions have come to the fore, in spite
ofa party rule against the forming offactions. They know, how-
ever, that there are differing views among the top leaders be-
cause the increasingly large numbers of persons leaving the
Soviet Union for the West disclose such varying views. These
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION vii
reports gain credence from the vocal opposition to the Soviet
model that has emerged among Communists in Italy, France and
Spain, and among the professed "scientific socialists" ofAfrica.
Clearly, Soviet structures are not universally acclaimed even by
those who accept Marxist goals and look to the Soviet Com-
munists for inspiration.
From these various sources, Western analysts have sometimes
concluded that the Communist party leaders now dominant are
determined to conserve the institutional Communist party and
Soviet state structures that have emerged in sixty years ofprac-
tice, and that they face some opposition from both a Right and a
Left within the party, each of which seeks some measure of
change in institutions, the better to serve Communist aims. The
Right is thought to include those who think the leadership has
strayed too far toward liberalization of attitudes; too far toward
relaxation of the discipline which Stalin had required; too far
toward rigid formalities that hamper flexible application of gov-
ernmental power. The Leftis thoughtto argue thatthe centerhas
not gone far enough in liberalizing the system. In a measure,
they want more emphasis upon "legality"; more emphasis upon
humanism in the governingprocess; more openingofthe gates of
censorship so as to permit penetration into Soviet specialist cir-
cles by renovating Western ideas designed to reap the full ben-
efits ofthe scientific and technological revolution.
While it now seems unlikely that any group would go so far as
to restore to the political stage the fraternal parties of socialists
and agrarians which shared in the early months of Lenin's gov-
ernment, and whose counterparts still function in a supportive
position in Poland and Hungary alongside the Communists, it is
possible that some recognition of"interest groups" might be fa-
vored by the liberalizers.
Ifit is true that pressures are being felt by the dominant group
of leaders within the Communist party, it is possible that 1977
was chosen as the year of the new Constitution in order to
strengthen the hands ofthose who resist institutional change. It
is a document designed to make radical innovation difficult, if
not impossible. It is a document designed to "freeze" Soviet
political structures for decades to come against inroads proposed
orto be proposedbythe generations now ascendingthe ladderof
political power.
While structural change seems to have been set aside for the
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION
viii
life ofthe new Constitution, there is one area ofpotential devel-
opment ofthe political process which is in the news. This is the
area of "public participation" in government. It is heralded by
the new Constitution as an aim ofthe Soviet state's policy mak-
ers, and it is implemented by various provisions such as the
referendum, the right to petition, and the public discussion of
drafts oflaw. The question arising in the minds ofsome Western
students ofthe Soviet system is whether broad segments ofthe
population can be drawn into the governing process without af-
fecting the system ofelite government which has characterized
the first sixty years, and whether "public participation" means
broad or only limited participation in the process ofimplement-
ing Communist party policy. Materials in this book are designed
to provide a basis for reaching conclusions to this question. As-
sured answers cannot be expected, because the accidents ofhis-
tory often upset the best of forecasts. Yet the broad design of
contemporary leadership is clear: to the extentthataconstitution
can achieve their purpose, they want to preserve the structures
that have stood the test oftime, and "public participation" must
fit into the current pattern as a strengthening adjunct, not as a
force for change.
A word needs to be said in explanation ofthe last chapter. The
book ends, as have prior editions, with a chapter entitled "The
Peril Points." This chapter was originally inspired by a sense
that forces rampant in the United States during the late 1950's
were trying to establish counterweights to Jeffersonian dem-
ocratic institutions by preventing wide-ranging discussion of
policy through public pillorying, ifnot eventually outright cen-
sorship, ofthose who disagreedwith them. The campaign was so
artful that many did not realize its subversive character until it
was turned on some ofthe most respected figures in the nation.
The point ofthe last chapter is that Soviet experience can have
lessons for democrats in other lands. Communists have demon-
strated that it is possible to structure institutions ofgovernment
along lines of Jeffersonian democracy and to turn these in-
stitutions to the achievement ofgoals overwhich there can be no
debate.
Although the 1950's have passed into history, the perils of
those years occasionally recur, and sometimes in unexpected
quarters. New York police, while offduty, tried to silence a great
newspaper by preventing its delivery trucks from reaching
