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The Soviet Concept of Democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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The cold war—now aggravated by shooting war in Korea, —is being waged on many fronts. One of these fronts is ideological, reflecting the incompatibility of the social ideals of the opponents. The ideological war is being conducted in many ways; and among the weapons used by the foe there is perhaps none more irritating to the Americans than the assertion that the Soviets enjoy real democracy while American democracy is but a ridiculous fake.
From the very first day of their rule over Russia the Soviet leaders have insisted that their democracy is the best, or the highest ever achieved in history. This insistence they have made both before and after the enactment of the Stalin Constitution (1936)—in other words, both when their democracy excluded from the exercise of political rights the members of the former “bourgeoisie” and its servants (for example, clergymen and Tsarist policemen), and after their shift to universal suffrage.
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References
1 Cf. Timasheff, N. S., The Great Retreat (1946), p. 95.Google Scholar
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8 Ibid., pp. 6, 9. In another lecture by K. Kostaradze (Moscow, 1947) bearing exactly the same title as that of Piaskovsky, this “information” appears: “In the bourgeois states the upper chambers consist of hereditary members, or members appointed by the government.”
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10 The meaning of this puzzling statement is probably this: in Eastern Europe, the survival of feudal institutions precluded the formation of a “pseudo-democratic” tradition of the Western type. This made it easier to jump to the higher level of Soviet democracy.
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18 Same statement as quoted in footnote 16.
19 Baltiiski (see footnote 15).
20 Ibid.
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