Philosophical analysis of the Soviet Union as a phenomenon is relevant in light of the approaching centennial of its formation. The significance of this event derives from the Soviet Union’s enormous scale and historically, qualitatively unique formation that included many dozens of nations and nationalities. This formation replaced the equally enormous Russian Empire but arose not due to natural development but on its ruins, by the means of a European Marxism adapted to domestic conditions. Nowhere in (...) the world have societies and states like the Soviet Union arisen spontaneously, while the Eastern European “people’s democracy” countries created after the Second World War repeatedly attempted to free themselves from the kinship and dominance of the Soviet Union and would disappear immediate with its collapse.In this article, the question of what the Soviet Union was in its project and reality is discussed in the following contexts: Marxist solutions to Russia’s agrarian question and their subsequent internationalization to create a “world union of workers and peasants” (V.I. Lenin); analysis of the principle of forced labor as the primary means of creating the “socialist working man”; the formation of the Soviet Union as a “quasi-federal” community of peoples “national in form, socialist in content”; and the forced inclusion of Eastern European peoples in the emerging “world Soviet Union” as “payment” for their liberation from fascism. This article justifies the claim that without analysis of the essential role of these ideas and phenomena, one could hardly expect to gain a holistic understanding of the nature of the Soviet Union. (shrink)

The article explains why Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev era chose to characterize the Soviet system as totalitarian. The dissidents and the reformers strongly disagreed among themselves about the origins of Soviet totalitarianism. But both groups stressed the effects of totalitarianism on the individual personality; in doing so, they revealed themselves to be the heirs of the tsarist intelligentsia. Although the concept of totalitarianism probably obscures more than it clarifies when it is applied to (...) regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet, the decision of the dissidents and the reformers to use the term enabled them to clarify their own values and the reasons they felt compelled to criticize the Soviet Union and to call for its radical reform. (shrink)

This interview with Jeremy Waldron covers three topics. Firstly, we dealt with the methodology debate, that is, the discussion about how to proceed in analyzing the nature of law. Does the question ‘What is law?’ require a descriptive analysis of the concept of law or, rather, a normative exercise in political philosophy? Secondly, we spoke about the role of law in response to historic injustice, especially in relation to the restitution of property rights. On this topic Waldron vindicates the ‘supersession-thesis’, (...) the idea that, due to changed circumstances and the passage of time, historic injustices become superseded. The third section of the interview is devoted to Waldron’s perspective on the citation of foreign law by national judges. (shrink)

Over the last few years a growing body of literature on Soviet-Third World relations has become available. The two books under discussion here represent valuable contributions to the understanding of East-South relations. Both books deal with changing Soviet approaches to the Third World. They trace Soviet interest in the developing countries and associate it with the post-Stalin leadership. Both books challenge prevailing views on Soviet behavior in the Third World and provide an excellent overview of (...) class='Hi'>Soviet scholarly works on development issues. Of the two, Valkenier's book is the more interesting because it is more concise and rich. It offers a thorough review of the Soviet literature on academic research and policy decisions regarding their position with the Third World over the last 30 years. (shrink)

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the (...) socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism. (shrink)

Title: The Soviet Union and the Third WorldPublisher: Praeger Publishers, Inc.ISBN: 0030621496Author: Elizabeth KridlTitle: Soviet-Third World RelationsPublisher: Westview PressISBN: 0865316473Author: Carol R. Saivetz and Sylvia Woodby.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1990, three of its 15 components, the Baltic States, joined the European Union, and a fourth, Moldova, may well join in the future. The other 11 quickly became presidential republics, following the lead given by Boris Yeltsin, the president of the largest among them, Russia. By 1994, all 11 were headed by a president elected by universal suffrage. These ex-Soviet countries contribute significantly to the number of presidential republics in the (...) world. Presidential republics form a clear majority, being predominant in Latin America and Africa, alongside the ex-Soviet Union. They are rare in Europe, the main cases being France, Romania, and, though seemingly temporarily, some Balkan states; in Asia, outside the ex-Soviet Union, they are a small minority. (shrink)

Soviet philosophy can no longer be ignored by any serious student of contemporary thought. It is the work of academic philosophers who, on the whole, are neither more nor less competent than their colleagues in the free world. They have, however, inherited a reputation for the dogmatic repetip. on of superannuated doctrines. This reputation, en gendered by poor work under political pressure, was justified until about the mid-fifties. However, in the mid-sixties, when declining pressures make for the toleration of (...) a wider scale of qualified opinion, it is no longer that. The present survey of Soviet thought in the mid-sixties, comprising papers by Western specialists in its major domains, gives an up-to-date account of an impressive field of philosophical endeavor which, awakened from dogmap'c slumbers, rapidly gains in interest and encourages hopes of becoming a valuable component in the vast complex of contemporary philosophy. The studies on Soviet logic and atheism have originally appeared in a special issue of Inquiry (Vol. 9,1) devoted to philosophy in Eastern Europe and edited by the present writer on behalf of Professor Arne Naess. The other papers of this volume are reprinted from Studies in Soviet Thought, the only Western philosophical review entirely dedicated to systematic studies in this field. The necessary permissions by editors and publishers have been granted and are gratefully acknowledged. ER VIN LASZLO v CONTENTS INTRODUCTION J. M. (shrink)

John Dewey, like many other American intellectuals between the world wars, was fascinated by Soviet events. After visiting Russia in 1928 he wrote excitedly about the and especially about Soviet educational theorists. In his early enthusiasm Dewey hoped that the US and the USSR could learn from each other, especially among the cosmopolitan group of progressive pedagogues he met on his trip. Observing the rise of Stalinism in the 1930s, though, his optimism dissipated; at the same time he (...) came to emphasize historical and cultural differences between the US and the USSR. The result is apparent in Dewey's writings in the late 1930s (especially FreedomandCulture, 1939), as he began to evaluate the Soviet Union in terms that would have been anathema to him a decade earlier. He increasingly blamed Russia's cultural heritage for inhibiting Soviet development along the lines he had envisioned. Dewey's transformation suggests the importance of a cultural reading of American ideas about the USSR. Many American observers joined Dewey in seeing the USSR as the product of Russian culture, with its historical traditions and its own national character—and not just as the instantiation or betrayal of a political doctrine. (shrink)

Soviet philosophy has no great reputation in the Western philosophical world. Physicists, mathematicians, geographers and geomorphologists, medical scientists and men working in certain branches of history and linguistics have found it profitable to follow the researches of their Soviet counterparts; philosophers have not. Academician Mitin, it is true, told the Soviet Academy of Sciences early in 1943 that ’philosophy has been raised to an unparalleled level in the Soviet Union, making the U.S.S.R. a country of (...) high philosophical culture . Many problems which are being argued by outstanding philosophers abroad have been solved here on the basis of dialectical materialism.” 1 To most non-Communists, Mitin's claim. (shrink)

Following the evolution of Soviet social psychology is rewarding not only in itself but also for the light it throws on current events and trends in contemporary Soviet philosophy in general.

Following the evolution of Soviet social psychology is rewarding not only in itself but also for the light it throws on current events and trends in contemporary Soviet philosophy in general.

An American medical ethicist finds the spirit of glasnost and perestroika permeating Soviet medical ethics. These themes, along with a heightened historical consciousness, and a commitment to the Hippocratic tradition, have reinforced a conviction about the infinite value of life.

This is a collection of twelve original essays on Soviet social sciences, with an emphasis on changes since Stalin's death. The lot of the Russian social scientist and the Russian philosopher has never been very easy--any discussion affecting authority was always difficult under conditions of religious and political oppression as well as. To this tradition the Soviet era has added an integrated view of the world which the scholar must use as his mental set. Philosophical reasoning has particularly (...) suffered under these conditions. E. Kamenka's essay on "Soviet Philosophy 1917-1967" gives a detailed examination of the politicization of philosophy by Lenin and under Stalin. The author claims that since 1956 there has been an improvement in professional integrity, especially in fields such as the philosophy of science, logic, and history of philosophy. Unfortunately the author's treatment of this period is brief and sketchy. The absence of a native tradition is one of the reasons for the weakness of philosophy in the Soviet Union, and there seems to be a better future for the disciplines which can draw upon ideas of native predecessors, such as experimental psychology and psychotherapy. The book also includes an essay on the socialization function of education; a readable account of the "revolution" in Soviet economics; and attempts at a study of politics where rationality cannot be carried too far. The authors of the essays on sociology and anthropology believe that, although these disciplines have been an administrative arm for fact gathering and planning, they are achieving a status of their own. All the authors of the essays see important improvements, if sometimes qualified, in the development of the social sciences in the Soviet Union.--O. Z. (shrink)

This absorbing account of relations between the Soviet Union and the leaders of anticolonial movements fighting to liberate Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau from Portuguese rule in the 1960s and 1970s is in part the fruit of Natalia Telepneva's doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Odd Arne Westad,1 whose own work looms large in the historiography of the Cold War. The book opens like a spy thriller with a Soviet military plane landing in Luanda on the day Agostinho (...) Neto, leader of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), is set to be inaugurated as the first president of independent Angola. On board the An-12 is an intelligence officer by the name of Boris Putilin, 'whose job had been to coordinate arms transfers from the Soviet Union'2 to the MPLA. Putilin is almost shot at by an Angolan solider but is rescued in time to attend the inauguration by the chief of airport security. (shrink)

Peter Boettke's Why Perestroika Failed offers an overly mechanistic explanation for the collapse of the Soviet economy, derived from Mises's theory of the economic impossibility of socialism. Arguing that the economic system was doomed to fail does not explain why it fell precisely when it did. Thus, Boettke underestimates the extent to which elements of the Communist nomenklatura themselves came to realize that their interests could be served by ditching the command economy. Such an emphasis on the role of (...) human agents is surely compatible with a Hayekian approach. (shrink)

ArgumentIn the 1920s the Soviet Union invested a group of talented, mostly socialist, occasionally Communist, Jewish writers and thinkers to use the power of the state to remake Jewish culture and identity. The Communist state had inherited a multiethnic empire from its tsarist predecessors and supported the creation of secular cultures for each ethnicity. These cultures would be based not on religion, but on language and culture. Soviet Jews had many languages from which to choose to be (...) their official Soviet language, but Yiddish, the vernacular of eastern European Jewry, won the battle and served as the basis of secular Soviet Jewish culture. Soviet Jewish scholars, writers, and other cultural activists remade Jewish culture by creating a usable Jewish past that fit the socialist present, reforming the “wild” vernacular of Yiddish into a modern language worthy of high culture, and transforming Jews into secular Soviet citizens. (shrink)

In the still highly politicized question of rupture or continuity between the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, elements of continuity are not hard to find, nor should this be a surprise, since a new state arose in the same geographical space and made use of the economic, intellectual, and demographic resources inherited from the Russian Empire. At the same time, the Soviet Union could not have been more different than the Russian Empire. It rejected a (...) number of key elements of the sociopolitical project that underlay the nationalizing tsarist empire and introduced radically new political and social principles for organizing that space. In particular, the Bolsheviks purposefully engaged in dismantling the tsarist efforts to build a great ethnic-Russian nation to stand at the center of the Russian Empire’s nationalities policy. The irreversible disintegration of post-Soviet space into separate nationalizing states became possible only toward the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, the imperial nature of the modern post-Soviet Russian core permits us to say that the imperial logic has survived. This is where we can find an element of inescapable continuity. We present studies of “continuities” and “ruptures” in modern academic discourse and in an updated format, gravitating toward “empirically nuanced” tools for analyzing multiple historical temporalities. (shrink)

Success in Soviet trade negotiations depends to a great extent on the images that the Soviet negotiators form of their Western counterparts. These images, in turn, depend to a great extent on the images presented to such Soviet negotiators during their education, through various tales and stories.

Introduction to the special cluster of articles by feminists from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

This paper considers Kazakh traditional culture in terms of its etiquette rules. Four main blocks are explored: the etiquette of greeting and farewell, hospitality, family etiquette, and blessings, all of which are mandatory in everyday situations. This study acquires importance in relation to the complicated processes of interethnic relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Kazakhstan. Familiarity with the traditions and norms of behavior in Kazakh society as well a basic knowledge of ethnic (...) etiquette serves to strengthen intercultural relations and to understand the ways of life of neighboring and distant peoples. This topic is of special importance in relation to the study of communication culture among interethnic groups after the collapse of the USSR. (shrink)

The article studies the implications for historical materialism of the failure of the socialist project in the Soviet Union. The author demonstrates that the said failure broadly confirms central historical materialist theses, which would have been difficult to sustain if the Russian revolution had succeeded in its goal of superseding capitalism and establishing a socialist society.

ABSTRACTThis study reconsiders scientists’ identity in terms of vocation vs. profession, proceeding from Max Weber’s differentiation between science as profession and science as an inner calling fo...