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The USSR: Oligarchy or Dictatorship?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert G. Wesson
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Extract

By the summer of 1971 Leonid Brezhnev had apparently become effective head of state of the Soviet Union and its spokesman. When Chancellor Brandt visited the Soviet Union in September he conferred with no one else, and Pravda reported (September 19) that “responsible members of the Secretariat of the General Secretary” participated in the conversations. One is reminded of the power obscurely exercised by Stalin’s personal secretariat, especially the mysterious Poskrebyshev during the later years of his rule, and of the role of Hitler’s secretariat, headed by Martin Bormann. Yet Brezhnev is certainly not the despot implied by these analogies. Officially, he has assumed no new powers. More important, no one has been ousted from the top circle since 1965, when the regime seemed to be truly a plural leadership in which no individual was clearly dominant. Yet it is practically the first task of a new tyrant to replace with his dependents those who were formerly his equals or at least potential rivals.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1972 , pp. 314 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

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References

1. See Daniels, Robert V., “Stalin’s Rise to Dictatorship, 1922-29,” in Dallin, Alexander and Westin, Alan F., eds., Politics in the Soviet Union (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

2. For a full discussion see Pethybridge, Roger, A Key to Soviet Politics: The Crisis of the Anti-Party Group (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

3. Conquest, Robert, Power and Policy in the U.S.S.R. (London and New York, 1961), p. 75.Google Scholar

4. As noted by Linden, Carl A., Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964 (Baltimore, 1966), p. 15.Google Scholar

5. Fischer, Louis, The Life of Lenin (New York, 1964), pp. 430–34.Google Scholar

6. A Ulam, dam B., The Bolsheviks (New York, 1965), pp. 556 ff.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 422.

8. Fischer, Life of Lenin, pp. 430-31.

9. Schapiro, Leonard, “Collective Lack of Leadership,” Survey, Winter-Spring 1969, p. 193.Google Scholar

10. Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-stabilizing Oligarchy?” Soviet Studies, 22, no. 2 (October 1970): 175 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rigby believed that the post-Khrushchev oligarchy had come to an agreement to maintain the separation of headship of government and party, to reduce patronage, to distribute place in the main organs suitably, and to maintain a balance among leaders; but he foresaw (p. 191) no stability for this arrangement.

11. Ibid., p. 171.

12. The successors of Stalin apparently tried to pluralize the headship of the party, because the post of general secretary lapsed with the disappearance of the incumbent; but by September 1953 it was decided to make Khrushchev first secretary.

13. See Wesson, Robert G., “Soviet Russia, a Geopolitical View,” Survey, Spring 1971.Google ScholarPubMed