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Esoteric Communication in Soviet Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Myron Rush
Myron Rush
Affiliation:
The RAND Corporation
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Extract

Current Soviet politics have been somewhat neglected as an object of study in the American academic community, in favor of research on social and political institutions for which there is considerable data. Investigation of Soviet elite politics has been left largely to journalists and government analysts, some of them able scholars. However, these specialists are chiefly engaged in assessing the existing situation and basic trends in the USSR, rather than in testing significant hypotheses or in working out fruitful methods of research. Unfortunately, the products of their inquiry tend to be somewhat ephemeral, and their potential contribution to progress in understanding the character of Soviet politics has not been adequately realized.

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Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , July 1959, pp. 614 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1959

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References

1 There are, of course, significant exceptions. E.g., see Fainsod, Merle, How Russia Is Ruled, Cambridge, Mass., 1954Google Scholar, especially ch. X.

2 I have discussed the role of esoteric communication in Soviet politics at length in The Rise of Khrushchev, Washington, D.C., 1958, pp. 88–94.

3 Compare the communiqué of the Central Committee issued following its plenum of February 1956 (Pravda, February 28, 1956) with the one issued after the September 1953 plenum (KPSS V Rezoliutsiiakh i Resheniiakh [Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU], Moscow, 1954, 111, p. 610).

4 See the work of the FAO Committee on Commodity Problems, including the Communication in the U.S.S.R.,” The RAND Corporation, Research Memorandum RM–1883, March 20, 1957, Santa Monica, Calif., pp. vi-viii, 70–80, 189–93; also The Rise of Khrushchev, pp. 35–41, 71–72, 104.

5 Compare the article, “Stalin,” in Kratkii Philosofskii Slovar' (Short Philosophical Dictionary), Moscow, 1953, with the one in Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar' (Encyclopedic Dictionary), Moscow, 1955, 111, p. 310.

6 Kommunist, No. 18 (1955), p. 40.

7 Pravda, May 27, 1955, and thereafter.

8 See note 3.

9 Khrushchev was then widely believed to be simply die spokesman for the collective leadership. He seemed to lack a dictator's bearing and self-control, and apparendy received no special deference from his colleagues, several of whom have since been designated members of an “anti-party” group.

10 “Khrushchev and the Stalin Succession,” p. 75.

11 Istorila SSSR, epokha sotaalizma (History of the USSR: The Epoch of Socialism), Moscow, 1958, p. 681.

12 Ibid., p. 682.

13 They provide the principal evidence in The Rise of Khrushchev. See also the articles of Boris Nicolaevsky in the New Leader and Sotsidisticheskii Vestnik (New York).

14 An important historical study based on such evidence is The Ritual of Liquidation, by N. Leites and E. Bernaut, Glencoe, Ill., 1954.

15 See George, Alexander L., Propaganda Analysis: A Study of Inferences Made from Nazi Propaganda in World War II, Evanston, Ill., 1959.Google Scholar