The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism

Citation

O’Neil, D.J. (1998), "The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 25 No. 6/7/8, pp. 1326-1327. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.1998.25.6_7_8.1326.1

One of the more interesting aspects of modern Soviet scholarship has been its failure in prediction. A survey of the literature preceding the Soviet collapse discerns few who predicted such an eventuality. The western intelligence services, despite their resources, proved no more successful. The sudden demise surprised virtually everyone. The probable causal factors should provide a rich vineyard of exploration for academics yet unborn. This book should prove an indispensable resource for those exploring the rise and fall of the Soviet labyrinth.

This book charts the Soviet experience from Lenin to Gorbachev and invites the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. It is a scholarly, imaginative, substantive work that should prove beneficial to both specialists and generalists. It represents a rich tradition of scholarship that leaves no stone unturned in telling its story. It combines a wealth of valuable information with perceptive political and economic insight. The book employs a typology that examines each Soviet regime in terms of underlying causes; institutions, programs, and policies; consequences; and tensions and contradictions. This typology provides an order and continuity and facilitates profitable comparison. The end result is a clear picture of the Soviet panorama.

The book, focusing on the various regimes, explores a certain persistency linked with unexpected experimentation. From the Stalinist regimentation and industrialization through the Gorbachev reformism, there existed both ideological parameters and significant innovation. But ultimately there was a failure to compete with the West, to accommodate a more sophisticated and demanding constituency, and to adapt to the modern scientific and technological revolutions. Only with Gorbachev was there a willingness to question the basic economic assumptions and move toward the market. But initially this was done very conditionally and with numerous reservations. The scenario seems to question whether a system so ideologically oriented could cope with modernity. The book ends with the Soviet collapse and offers little optimism for Russia’s future.

This work suggests an interesting series of cultural questions. To what degree are the underpinning cultural problems in developing a European‐type economic/political system due to the Czarist/Byzantine legacy of traditional Russia, and incidentally shared by the other Eastern Orthodox societies? And to what degree do these cultural problems relate to the 70+ years of a Marxist‐Leninist rule that stressed communal values, deemphasized individual responsibility and initiative and promoted a state of dependency? In either case, how might Russia develop the underpinning culture necessary to sustain the modern economic and political structures? Most of the sociological literature on changing cultural values,from Max Weber to George Foster and Edward Banfield, is pessimistic about rationally directed value change. The process is slow and incremental and the ramifications often unforeseen. Accordingly, one wonders if there is hope for the perennially suffering Russians.

Ultimately, what lessons can we draw from the tragic Soviet experiment, so costly in life, resources, and wasted opportunity? Probably few beyond the prophetic observations of Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.