Stalinism and After: The Road to Gorbachev

228 Pages·1988·1.32 MB·English

by  Alec Nove

Stalinism and After

iii
Also by Alec Nove
Socialism, Economics, and Development
The Economics of Feasible Socialism
Political Economy and Soviet Socialism
The Soviet Economic System
Was Stalin Really Necessary?
Economic History of the USSR
Stalinism and After
The Road to Gorbachev
Alec Nove
University of Glasgow
London and New York
First published 1975
by Unwin Hyman Inc.
Second Edition 1981
Third Edition 1989, reprinted 1990
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 1975, 1981, 1989 by Unwin Hyman, Inc.
© 1992 by Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-203-98744-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-09445-3 (Print Edition)
Contents
Preface ix
1 Genesis 1
The Russian Political Tradition 1
The Circumstances of Revolution 6
‘NEP’ and the Rise of the Secretariat 15
The Great Debate: Socialism in One Country 19
The Great Turning-Point 26
2 The System Consolidated 33
The Revolution from Above 33
Privilege, Inequality, Hierarchy, Discipline 40
The Seventeenth Congress and the Great Terror 44
The Purposes of the Purge 50
The Cultural Counter-Revolution and Neo-Nationalism 57
Foreign Policy Turnabouts 63
Economic Policies in the Mid-Thirties 66
3 War 73
Munich and the Nazi-Soviet Pact 73
Stalin’s Biggest Mistake 76
Stalin the War Leader 81
4 The Last Years of Stalin 91
The Brief False Spring 91
viii
Stalin and the Cold War 94
Political and Cultural Repression at Home 98
Economic Progress and the Nineteenth Party Congress 102
The End of an Era 105
A Digression: What Explanation for Stalinism? 109
5 Stalin’s Heirs and Stalin’s Legacy 113
Malenkov Outmanoeuvred: Khrushchev Wins Power 121
Khrushchev’s Policies and ‘Destalinisation’ 126
Khrushchev Challenged and Triumphant 138
6 The Fall of Khrushchev and the Rise of Brezhnev 147
The Brezhnev Regime 158
Brezhnevism 172
7 Brezknev’s Death and Gorbachev’s Rise 177
Enter Gorbachev 177
Gorbachev and Stalin 187
Appendix 191
1 Biographical Data 191
2 Chronological List of Events, 1917–85 199
3 Membership of the Party 207
4 Further Reading 209
Index 211
Preface
The object of this book is to explain how Stalinism came to be,
what was its nature, how it was modified after the despot’s death.
To this end I concentrate on causes and trends rather than on
detail. If you wish to know the date at which Stalin arrived at
Tsaritsyn, the text of any paragraph of the Constitution, or the
output of steel in 1980, this is not the book for you. I do not wish
to imply that these things are unimportant, and you will find in the
list of recommended reading a number of books which deal with
them. In fact, it is my hope that you will be sufficiently interested
in this dramatic and eventful period to wish to read much more
about it.
This is not a biography of Stalin, of Khrushchev or of Brezhnev.
We are concerned with them, of course, but as political men. We
are concerned also with another and vital question: what
difference did their personalities make? A great revolution, carried
out in the name of equality, freedom and justice, turned into Stalin-
despotism. Why? How? Is this explicable primarily in terms of
Russia’s historical heritage, or of the Russian revolution and its
isolation in a hostile environment, or was it the result of the logic
of Leninism, the seizure of power by a Marxist party in a
backward peasant country? These are impersonal explanations. Do
they miss out the vital factor of Stalin’s peculiar personality?
Similarly, we may ask ourselves whether the attempt by
Khrushchev to demolish the Stalin myth and to alter course was a
personal aberration, and whether this applies also to the partial
return to more repressive methods under Brezhnev. This latest
edition also takes into account what some regard as ‘the
Gorbachev revolution’, which is going on as these lines are
written.