Document created: 14 October 2003
Air University Review,
November-December 1973
Western military and political analysts interested in Communist systems
continue to pay considerable attention to citizens’ demands as evidence of
satisfaction or dissatisfaction within the political system, “demands” meaning
the citizens’ expression that a value decision with respect to a given subject
should, or should not, be made by those in authority.1 This
continuing analysis of citizen demands is now concentrating on the widely
reported expansion of the Soviet “dissent movement.”2
However, many current studies of the function of citizen demands in Communist systems seem to have a serious inherent weakness within themselves. As they focus on dissent, these studies acquire a negative quality, and at times they convey the unexpressed belief that the current Soviet political system is inherently less capable of response to valid citizen demands than is the democratic model. These studies likewise appear to assume that the domestic environment surrounding the democratic model is or should be equally valid and applicable to the Soviet political system.
Further, our traditional conception of a Communist state challenges the thought that citizens perform an important function in levying demands on Communist political systems. Lenin’s assertion that the Communist party was and should remain the “vanguard of the proletariat” was a clear rejection of the idea that the masses should direct the party. Quite the opposite was to be true; the party, acting as the only repository of socialist truth, was the single-minded leader. Stalin is quoted as follows:
The party cannot be a real party
if it limits itself to registering what the masses of the working class feel
and think. . . . The party must stand at the head of the working class; it must
see farther than the working class; it must lead the proletariat, and not
follow in the call of the spontaneous movement.3
Through the years, subsequent party leaders and documents have reasserted this basic theory. But there appears to be a significant gap between theory and practice.
The conflict between the theory of Communism and the realities of the day
became evident to the non-Communist world with the publication of Merle Fainsod’s
Smolensk under Soviet Rule.4 This work, based on documents
captured by invading German forces in World War II and subsequently captured by
U.S. forces, shed important new light on the workings of the Smolensk Oblast
(“Province”) Party (RSFSR). Fainsod demonstrated that citizens’ demands served
two vital functions: (1) they exposed and, therefore, inhibited misconduct at
the lower administrative levels; and (2) they tended to diffuse popular
discontent and direct that discontent from the center to specific local
officials.5
While a second study of the magnitude of the Fainsod work is not possible because of a lack of data, other somewhat more oblique efforts by Milton C. Lodge6 and James H. Oliver7 continue to demonstrate the capacity of Communist systems to receive and process demands from a broader-than-party base.
Lodge’s content analysis of selected periodicals concludes that five reasonably distinct categories of Soviet elites (members of party apparatchiki and the economic, military, legal, and literary communities) claim expanding roles in policy-making within their professions. Oliver’s examination of lower administrative levels of the bureaucracy indicates that citizens continue to levy numerous demands upon the regime.
One might expand upon these efforts and assert that citizen demands also serve to identify systemic problem areas which require corrective action in sort of a management-by-exception method; expand the citizens’ conscious or unconscious identification with the political system; co-opt the dissenter to the extent that he or she “participates” in the system; exercise the bureaucracy by forcing it to function; promote internal communication between and among various authorities and their agencies; and provide a continuing source of ideas, some of which will be incorporated into the goals of the polity.
If Fainsod, Lodge, Oliver, and others have demonstrated that the Soviet political system has the capacity to process some forms of citizens’ demands, how is it possible that the system appears incapable of processing demands associated with the “dissent movement”? The answer to that question rests in the nature of citizen demand itself and the nature of the “dissent movement.”
Whether voiced in a democratic, authoritarian, or other political model,
citizen demands are multidimensional entities. Their multidimensionality
includes an ideological component (conformity to a belief, or set of beliefs,
which may or may not be verifiable but which are accepted as verified by the
group because they perform social functions for that group), a material
component (resources which would be set in motion toward the accomplishment of
the goal or objective), a quantitative component (the numbers of politically
relevant citizens voicing the demand), and finally, a previously established
sum value component (the sum value of all other demands being voiced at that
point in time). All political systems are required to assess and evaluate these
components as they receive and process total demand. As an equation, these
components and total demand would appear as follows:
|
ideological |
+ |
material |
x |
|
|
|
quantitative |
+ |
sum value of |
|
= |
total |
All political systems are being tasked continuously to process total demand.
We can graphically illustrate both the ideological and material components of a single demand and total demand as well as a level of maximum possible demand. (Figure 1) Our purposes in doing so are threefold: First, in the cases of both single demand and total demand, such an illustration permits us to observe aspects of the exchange required in demand processing as the regime balances ideological and material considerations. This exchange may require some trade-off of the ideological component in favor of other components. This trade-off is not always singularly significant and may involve the sacrifice of what has been defined as “petty ideology”;8 however, it can be cumulatively significant. Second, in the case of total demand, such an illustration provides an indication of the direction in which the regime is moving as it processes total demand. Third, again in the case of total demand, such an illustration demonstrates the finite limitations that can exist with respect to the maximum demand processing capabilities of a regime.
|
|
It may appear from this graph that demand is static, but this is absolutely not the case. Demand is dynamic; the components are continuously subject to change and flux as citizens participate in their political system.
How does the Soviet “dissent movement” fit into this concept of demand? What are the ideological and material dimensions of the dissent demand? What is its quantitative component? Finally, how do the demands of the dissent movement impact upon the sum of other demands (total demand minus dissent demand) being levied upon the Soviet political system? To answer these questions, we must examine certain qualities of the Soviet “dissent movement.”
There is no single “dissent movement” in the Soviet Union; there are dissent movements.9 Western scholars and journalists have observed the resurgence of dissent in the Soviet Union since 1965 (the date of the Daniel-Siniavsky trials, frequently cited as a milestone in the post-Khrushchevian return to authoritarianism) and have attempted to specify its composition. Zev Katz, in his 1971 study of dissent,10 categorizes participating elements as follows:
—the literary dissent movement, focusing on contemporary Soviet life and/or the injustices of current or former authorities. The best-known of the literary dissenters is Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
—the democratic (sometimes called scientific) dissent movement, focusing on human rights, the rule of law, and scientific freedoms. The best-known of the democratic or scientific dissenters are Andrei Sakharov, Roy and Zhores Medvedev, and Andrei Amalrik.
—the religious dissent movement, focusing on religious freedoms and freedom from state interference in church-related matters. Elements exist within the Orthodox, Uniate, and Baptist churches and Jewish synagogues of the RFSFR, the Muslims of Central Asia, and among residual Catholicism in Lithuania.
—national minorities dissent movement, focusing on their ethnic identity and culture, on freedom for themselves and their lands from the U.S.S.R., or, alternatively, on the lessening of enforced Russification. This category encompasses Tatars, Turks, Kazaks, Ukrainians, Georgians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, among others.
—the Great Russian nationalist movement, focusing on Russian (versus Soviet) traditions and culture and in some cases calling for a return to a “Slavophile”11 attitude. This movement finds support in many areas of old Russia.
The dissent movements comprise a highly fragmented body of citizens whose views often coincide only to the extent that they are all in disagreement with the existing authorities or regime. Significant differences exist not only among the five categories (for example, those favoring a return to Great Russian nationalism and those opposing Russification of ethnically different lands and peoples) but also within categories.
One of the principal modes of communication among the dissent movements in the Soviet Union is the samizdat (literally translated, “self-published”) literature, a principal element of which is the continuing Chronicle of Current Events (Khronika). The samizdat literature expresses a full range of citizens’ demands, from the political left to the political right. Some authors condemn the existing order for being too lax and call for a return to Stalinism and the concentration camps. Others call for the spread of international Communism and/or international saber rattling. Still others issue demands for civil and social rights in the manner of social democrats and libertarians.
The Chronicle now serves as if it were a central journal of all movements of dissent. It provides information on arrests of members of all movements; it prints appeals and letters of protest in behalf of all types of dissent, as well as summaries of all journals and their views.
Recently, the overall impression
of this literature has been somewhat similar to the press of a nontotalitarian
country; the various journals represent widely different points of view and
interests; they editorialize on each other, reprint items from each other,
criticize and attack each other.12
Except for collective condemnation of the existing order, there appears to
be little area on which virtually all samizdat authors agree.13
It may be concluded that we are dealing not only with a number of dissent movements but also with significant fragmentations within several of these movements.
Notwithstanding fragmentations, what are the total numbers of citizens
(quantitative component) participating in the dissent movements within the
Soviet Union? One British observer of the Soviet scene reported in 1970 that “.
. . dissidents probably comprise no more than one percent of the
intelligentsia, and perhaps one half of one percent in other groups. And most
of these are not against Communism or Socialism. They are more in nature of a
loyal opposition. They want the system to work more efficiently and they want
the Constitution to be observed.”14
A more recent estimate shows from “several hundred” active dissents in the literary movement, to “thousands” active in the democratic, ethnic minorities and Great Russian nationalist movements, to “several score of thousands” active in the religious dissent movement.15 At present there are approximately 250 million citizens in the U.S.S.R.
This fundamental weakness, an inability to achieve a wider base, has been
recognized by members of the dissent movements themselves. Andrei Amalrik, in Will
the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?, analyzed the 738 dissenters who had
protested the Galanskov-Ginsburg trial and estimated the core of the movement
to comprise no more than a few dozen active participants, these overwhelmingly
intelligentsia, with only 40 workers (6 percent) and no peasants.16
Thus another observer could report that, for all their cool determination, “Amalrik
and his friends—and even Sakharov and his more influential colleagues—are
nonentities to most Russians.” The average Soviet citizen belongs to a “silent
majority” of such awesome docility that, by comparison, the conventional
American might almost be considered a Weatherman.17
This observation begins to blend with the impact of prior political norms and values on today’s Soviet citizen and on his desire to levy certain types of citizen demands.
It is impossible to understand the Soviet Union without examining the Russian ground on which it is built. It is also impossible to examine the conduct of the various dissent movements of 1973 without having an appreciation of the role of the individual citizen and prior authorities, for that is precisely the milieu in which that Soviet citizen perceives himself to be.
John Keep, commenting on Andrei Amalrik and the absence of any traditions that would suggest a citizenry capable of voicing Western-style participatory demand, states:
Amalrik is doubtlessly justified,
however, in noting the limited social basis of the [literary and scientific]
opposition, which is almost wholly an intelligentsia phenomenon. The broad
masses of the Soviet population can only rise to “passive discontent . . .
directed not against the regime as a whole but against particular features of
it. They have no appreciation of freedom in the Western sense: [they] feel
respect for force, authority, or even, ultimately, for intelligence or
education, but that human personality of itself should represent any kind of
value—this is a preposterous idea in the popular mind.”18
George L. Yaney, in an article entitled “Law, Society, and the Domestic Regime in Russia, in Historical Perspective,” corrects those who would even ask: Is the Soviet Union remaining totalitarian, or is it becoming “liberal”?19 Yaney examines the ground on which the Soviet state is built, and he finds Russian soil. He advises his reader that because political freedom, as Americans use the term, is an attribute of a society, not an individual, and because individual rights repose in the common recognition of them by the general citizenry, such a question indicates a serious lack of understanding of Russian history from medieval times.
Yaney observes that, in Russia, neither freedom nor law has meanings based
on constitutional principles recognized by the citizen as legitimate. The “rule”
of the czar was an abstraction; the rule of his agent was reality. Political
power in the hands of such agents neither needed nor claimed support of the
peasant. This historical fact gives birth to the present-day citizen’s attitude
toward his state: the Russian peasant views the state as being concerned with
its own survival, against foreign and internal enemies.20
Liberalism in the Western sense has never been relevant in Russia.
Russian history impacts upon dissenters in still other ways. Even the best-known of the dissenters, Solzhenitsyn, cannot escape the fact that he walks in the paths of Dostoevski, Pushkin, Chekhov, and other Russian writers. Solzhenitsyn, the mathematician-turned-author, is compared with Dostoevski, the engineer-turned-author, with Pushkin, the civil-servant-turned-author, and with Chekhov, the medical-doctor-turned-author. Although they span the two greatest branches of Russian literature, the arts and the sciences, they continue to represent thoughts which the general populace may or may not read but upon which they generally will not act.
What can be said in conclusion? What forecasts can be made with respect to the dissent movements and their political relevancy?
Andrei Amalrik’s forecast is for an “inevitable” international war between
the Soviet Union and China. He sees this war as providing the outside force
that finally permits democratic change, which the Soviet citizen cannot achieve
unassisted.21
A forecast of Sino-Soviet war for these reasons appears to be insufficiently founded, just as is a forecast of a successor Western-style democratic regime. On the one hand, it would appear rash to assume that the Soviet regime will prove incapable of devising measures to moderate its dissenting citizens. On the other hand, we should not expect a successor regime to grow in other than Russian soil—now a somewhat Soviet soil.
As Soviet authorities continue to receive and process citizens’ demands, they will continue to assess also the ideological, the material, and the quantitative components of these demands. They will be obligated continuously to make decisions with respect to trade-offs between and among these components. At times, the material or the quantitative components may suffer in favor of the ideological; but at other times, the ideological component must give way to other forces. Elements of the petty, and at times the grand, ideology must be sacrificed.
Referring to the concept of demand presented earlier, we can illustrate these exchanges and observe the direction in which the regime is moving. (Figure 2)
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The ideological and material mix of demands levied by the ongoing dissent movements is clearly inconsistent with the sum of demands levied by the rest of society. The amounts of sacrifice required to meet dissenters’ demands fully may be more than regime authorities are prepared to make. But more important, dissenters’ demands are greater than the general citizenry is prepared to demand. The general body of Soviet citizens is levying demands that move the system in a different direction.
Within the literary dissent movement, it is difficult to forecast when the pen may become as mighty as the sword. It is not the sword alone with which the pen must compete. Pens must compete with ballets and boxcars, toasters and telephones, pure science and puree. There is little to indicate that the way today’s average Soviet citizen views the Soviet literary dissenter is significantly different from the way his Russian forebears viewed earlier Russian literary dissenters, or that the dissenter’s message is more important than “proper” attention by the authorities to the average citizen’s needs (“proper,” that is, in his terms).
Within the democratic or scientific dissent movement, the conditions are somewhat different. There is less of a czarist tradition of unscience, and, as Zhores Medvedev carefully observed, when one is unscientific, progress (critical to U.S.S.R. development) is random or worse.22 To restrict science as Lysenko did is to insure failure. This the Soviet scientist-dissenter opposes. To the extent that the scientist opposes unscientific conditions within his profession, Lodge and others indicate that his dissent and demands for alternative sets of conditions will increasingly be processed favorably. To the extent, however, that the scientist steps outside his discipline, he will be viewed by the regime’s authorities as a member of a literary, religious, ethnic, or other dissent movement.
The Great Russian
nationalist movement may now be in the process of being wholly or partly
co-opted by the regime. Initially the movement began with younger Russians
searching for their own past. However, the movement has been co-opted by both
the Young Communist League (Komsomol) and other agencies of government.23
Herein is an example of the problems of trade-off between the ideological, material, and quantitative dimensions of demand. The Soviet Union is established in its ideology as a Marxist internationalist state, embracing all peoples and negating the need for any further search for meaning in life, whereas the title Slavophile would carry the state back to the ingrown, purely Russian nationalism of the past. Yet the regime felt it appropriate, in this case, to compromise on ideology in favor of validating linkages with the past.
Looking finally to the ethnic and religious minority dissent movements, we see that pre-Soviet czarist traditions do not apply. Lithuanians or Ukrainians should be expected to act more as Lithuanians or Ukrainians than as Russians or Soviets. Citizens’ demands viewed as invalid in the Russian tradition may be valid, indeed appropriate, within an ethnic or religious minority. This would seem to be the fundamental reason for the Soviet Union’s intensification of national unity programs and for the regime’s dealing most severely with ethnic and religious dissent.
Amalrik saw the credibility of ethnic dissent when he forecast the creation
of several ethnically homogeneous states from the ashes of the Soviet Union.24
Several final observations are possible:
First, the Soviet dissent movements are not politically significant in any macro change sense. These movements are not observable tips of icebergs that continually threaten the Soviet ship of state. In a micro sense, the dissent movements carve out expanded new areas of political pluralism, at the same time strengthening older areas.
Second, a statement that Soviet citizens do not meaningfully participate in their political system is misleading. One must ask, meaningful to whom? Studies from Smolensk forward demonstrate that Soviet citizens do participate but that this participation is limited not only by what the regime views as permissible but by what the citizen views as appropriate. Military and political observers of the Soviet political system can expect this slow but steady process of political pluralism to continue.
Finally, Soviet dissent should not be interpreted outside its Russian milieu. A Western-style democratic movement is not imminent or even foreseeable. Citizen participation as the United States and Western Europe have experienced it is as foreign to the average Soviet citizen as is Thomas Jefferson or Alexis de Tocqueville.
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Notes
1. For a detailed examination of the function of demand, see David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), especially Part Two.
2. As examples, see Peter J. Potichnyj, editor, Papers and Proceedings of the McMaster Conference on Dissent in the Soviet Union (Hamilton, Ontario: 1972); Zev Katz, Soviet Dissenters and Social Structure in the USSR (Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971); Abraham Brumberg, editor, In Quest of Justice: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union Today (New York: 1970); and Max Hayward and William C. Fletcher, editors, Religion and the Soviet State: A Dilemma of Power (London: 1969). For Soviet, or Russian, points of view, see Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (New York: 1970); Andrei Amalrik, Involuntary Journey to Siberia (New York: 1970); Zhores Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (New York: 1968); Roy and Zhores Medvedev, A Question of Madness (New York: 1971); Andrei D. Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom (New York: 1968); Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (New York: 1969); and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, First Circle (New York: 1968).
3. Quoted in Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 137.
4. Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).
5. Ibid., Chap. XX.
6. Milton C. Lodge, Soviet Elite Attitudes since Stalin (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Co., 1969).
7. James H. Oliver, “Citizen Demands and the Soviet Political System,” American Political Science Review, June 1969.
8. D. Jarovsky, “Soviet Ideology,” Soviet Studies, July 1969, pp. 3-20.
9. See Lewis S. Feuer, “Intelligentsia in Opposition,” Problems of Communism, XIX, 6 (November-December 1970), 1-16; John Keep, “Andrei Amalrik and 1984,” The Russian Review, XXX, 4 (October 1971), 335-45; Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, “The Voices of Dissent and the Visions of Gloom,” The Russian Review, XXIX, 3 (July-August 1971), 328-35; and Katz, op. cit.
10. Katz, pp. 2-29.
11. Slavophile: During the reign of Czar Nicholas I (1825-1855), a Slavophile movement arose around Moscow University. This movement revolted against French and British influence in Russia, asserting that Russian civilization was fundamentally superior to Western European civilizations, which the Russian educational community was then courting. This conflict between Western European and Russian traditions continues near the heart of several of the ongoing dissent movements.
12. Katz, pp. 26-27.
13. One possible exception can be seen in samizdat handling of the People’s Republic of China. There are no reported pro-PRC commentaries appearing in samizdat literature, possibly demonstrating an unwillingness to go outside the party on intraparty matters, or in reaction to 300 years of Tatar rule.
14. U.S. News and World Report, LXIX, 44, 30 November 1970.
15. Katz, p. 26.
16. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? pp. 76-77.
17. Newsweek, 1 February 1971, p. 33. Solzhenitsyn may be an exception, to the extent that his works are apparently widely read, and the effect of both Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe in publicizing Solzhenitsyn within his own country has been great. However, the political effect of Solzhenitsyn is subject to serious question.
18. John Keep, “Andrei Amalrik and 1984,” The Russian Review, XXX, 4 (October 1971), 341.
19. George L. Yaney, “Law, Society, and the Domestic Regime in Russia, in Historical Perspective,” American Political Science Review, June 1965, pp. 379-90.
20. Ibid., pp. 386-87.
21. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?
22. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko.
23. Georgia Anne Geyer, “A New Quest for the Old Russia,” Saturday Review, 25 December 1971, p. 16.
24. Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?
Major Ralph C. Gauer, U.S. Army, (M.A., University of Maryland) is an instructor in conflict theory and the Soviet political system at the U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In April 1973 he was recipient of that institute’s Distinguished Instructor Award. Prior military duties have included conventional and unconventional warfare assignments in Southeast Asia and intelligence assignments in Vietnam and with Headquarters, Department of the Army.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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