We have already posed this question in connection with the Stalinist period and proposed an answer. Russian history is a remarkable laboratory for the study of a variety of authoritarian systems and their crises, up to and including the present day. So let us now formulate the question rather differently, focusing on the system after Stalin’s death: was it socialist? Definitely not. Socialism involves ownership of the means of production by society, not by a bureaucracy. It has always been conceived of as a deepening – not a rejection – of political democracy. To persist in speaking of ‘Soviet socialism’ is to engage in a veritable comedy of errors. Assuming that socialism is feasible, it would involve socialization of the economy and democratization of the polity. What we witnessed in the Soviet Union was state ownership of the economy and a bureaucratization of economy and polity alike. If, confronted with a hippopotamus, someone insisted that it was a giraffe, would he or she be given a chair in zoology? Are the social sciences really that much less exact than zoology?
The confusion derives from the fact that the USSR was not capitalist: ownership of the economy and other national assets was in the hands of the state, which in practice meant the summit of its bureaucracy. This is a crucial defining characteristic, entailing that the Soviet system should be placed in the same category as traditional regimes where ownership of a huge patrimonial estate equalled state power. Such was the historical process at work in the constitution of Muscovy and its monarchic autocracy. It too had an influential bureaucracy, but it was the sovereign who possessed absolute power, not his bureaucracy. In the Soviet case, it was the bureaucracy which, in the final analysis, collectively acquired undivided and unchallenged power. ‘Bureaucratic absolutism’ – a relative of the older ‘agrarian despotisms’ – was much more modern than that of the Tsars or Stalin. But it belonged to the same species, especially when we factor in political control of the population by the state.
This line of argument also implies that the Soviet bureaucratic state, despite its revolutionary innovations in both terminology and recruitment of personnel from the lower classes, directly inherited many of the old Tsarist institutions; and thus it was inevitable that it continued Tsarist traditions of state-building. In large part, this stemmed from the fact that after the revolution the agencies reactivated under Soviet auspices could function only with the help of officials from the old regime. Lenin himself had noted with regret that entire sections of the Tsarist administration remained in operation under the new regime, leading to a much greater degree of historical continuity than had been envisaged prior to October. The new regime had to learn how to handle finances, foreign affairs, military matters, intelligence operations, and so on; and it was obliged to turn not just to the expertise of some specialists, but to whole agencies, which in many respects continued to function according to established procedures. The old officialdom could not be replaced or changed overnight. A new state had been created, but its officials derived from the old one. The problem now, as Lenin saw it, was how to get them to work better.[2] Such continuity with the practices and traditions of the past was, of course, unavoidable, especially inasmuch as the relevant personnel numbered in the tens of thousands and traditions in state institutions were so entrenched. The new authorities did not know how to reconstruct them. In fact, they had no alternative but to take over these institutions, alter some of the details, and let them conduct business as usual.
The Soviet system ended up erecting a rather ‘classic’ bureaucratic state, run by a pyramidal hierarchy. Accordingly, once the phase of revolutionary fervour was over, there was no real need for it to distance itself from old models – except, perhaps, in the case of institutions that had no counterpart under Tsarism. Moreover, every time a new agency had to be created, a special commission was appointed to oversee its organization, and it became common practice to ask a specialist scholar or experienced bureaucrat to study how a parallel institution had operated in Tsarist Russia. Where no precedent existed, Western models were consulted.
Recourse to historical precedents is natural anywhere, but in the Soviet case it was especially pronounced. In practice, Stalin’s Russia adopted the ideological principles of the Tsarist state on a well-nigh official basis. Even if the specifically Stalinist practice of displaying old nationalist symbols was abandoned after his death, the Soviet bureaucratic model retained a good many of its predecessor’s features, if not its ideological accoutrements. The tradition it continued defined the very essence of the system: an absolutism representing the bureaucratic hierarchy it was based on. Even the supposedly new position of general-secretary had more than a little in common with the image of the ‘Tsar, master of the land’. If the symbols and scenarios of the public manifestations of power were not the same, the imposing ceremonies staged by the Tsarist and Soviet regimes hailed from the same culture, in which icons had pride of place. They aimed to project an image of invincible might, which was sometimes nothing more than a way of concealing, exorcizing or distracting attention from internal fragility. But the Tsars’ successors must have known, especially in the twilight years of their regime, that systemic crisis and collapse were also part of the historical repertoire.
Given that from the end of the 1920s the construction of a strong state was at the heart of their endeavours, the issue of how to classify it arose. In the end, the old Tsarist term derzhava, especially cherished in conservative statist circles and among those in the military and public security bodies, was widely and openly used. In Lenin’s time, derzhavnik was a pejorative term for supporters of an oppressive, brutal chauvinism. As for derzhava, it harks back to the past in its kinship with two other terms used to define the essence of Tsarist power: samoderzhets, denoting the absolute ruler (the autocrat); and samoderzhavie, characterizing the regime as an ‘autocracy’. No doubt the hammer and sickle replaced the golden sphere topped off with a cross – the symbol of imperial power – but they represented nothing more than relics of the revolutionary past, much to the amusement of the bureaucratic ranks.
Ownership of all the country’s land by the state, as vested in the autocrat, had been characteristic of a number of old Eastern and Central European states. In the USSR, such ownership, laying claim to socialist credentials, extended to the whole economy and many other spheres of national life. Notwithstanding a more modern outlook (unlike their Tsarist predecessors, Soviet bureaucrats ran factories that built machines and even ‘atomic cities’), the affinity with the old model of ownership of all the land (the main economic resource in earlier times) was preserved, and even reinforced, by the state power exercised over the direct producers.
Throughout our explanation of the nature of this state we have encountered ‘bifurcations’ in the pattern of development and a whole series of ambiguities. If the system belonged in the old category of landowning autocracies, it was nevertheless performing a twentieth-century task – that of a ‘developmental state’ – and we have described in detail how it proceeded to develop the country. It is to this category of ‘developmental state’ that the USSR belonged in the initial stages of its existence. Such states have existed, and still do exist, in several countries – in particular in the immense territories of the East and Middle East (China, India, Iran), where ancient rural monarchies ruled. This historical rationality was at work in the construction of the post-Leninist state, even if its transformation into ‘Stalinism’ was something that dictatorial systems are readily prone to. But the transition to a despotic model is not an incurable pathology, as is demonstrated by the elimination of Stalinism in Russia and Maoism in China. And despite the pitfalls, the presence of a state that makes possible and directs economic development remains a historical necessity.
2
See T. P. Korzhikhina,