Soviet Dissent under Khrushchev: An Analytical Study

Robert M. Cutler

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Abstract: This article surveys existing concepts of dissent and opposition and clarifies their implications for the definition of the Soviet political system. It defines the Soviet political system to comprise elite, regime, and community sectors; specifies the political roles composing each sector; and considers intersectoral relationships as the structure of the Soviet political system. Three major structural changes, defined in terms of such interrelationships and specified in terms of the actual policies themselves, subsume the policies introduced during the Khrushchev period. These policies (and the structural changes they signify) are continually related to their effects on various modalities of political dissent, thereby showing how particular structural changes gave rise to particular dissident issues within particular political sectors. Its key predictions for the post-Brezhnev era were borne out by events. There are 67 explanatory and bibliographical notes incorporating sources and studies in English and French, as well as two Tables.	Outline: [ Introductory Remarks ] The Analytical Framework Dissent and Opposition Political Sectors   The Transformations in Soviet Political Structure under Khrushchev Decrease in Coercion Enforcement of Conformity Differentiation of Roles   Conclusion Political Analysis of Soviet Dissent Soviet Dissent and Political Analysis   Prospect: Soviet Politics and the Future of Soviet Dissent
Suggested citation for this webpage: Robert M. Cutler, "Prospects for Soviet Politics and the Future of Soviet Dissent" [excerpt from "Soviet Dissent under Khrushchev: An Analytical Study," Comparative Politics, 13, no. 1 (October 1980): 15–35, at 30–32, 35], available at <http://www.robertcutler.org/sections/ar80cpx4.html>, accessed 15 November 2024.

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4. Prospect: Soviet Politics and the Future of Soviet Dissent

Between 1964 and the present, Soviet political structure has changed in the following ways: (1) controls have been decisively tightened on community-sector dissent; (2) the attempt to integrate the community into the regime[60] has continued with somewhat mixed results; and (3) the internal differentiation of the elite and regime sectors has continued. The results have been: (1) the semilegitimate dissident issue areas of artistic freedom, socialist legality, and religious autonomy have ceased to be viable, their partisans having been forced into silence or exile, or into (2) the illegitimate issue areas of political democracy and human rights, with whose supporters they have discovered increasingly common cause; and (3) nationality rights advocates, finding themselves in a similar situation, have discovered a legitimate outlet in the issue area of developmental rationality. Rakowska-Harmstone has analyzed the elements leading to this last, most salient outcome:

1.  the formation of indigenous modem elites who seek sources of legitimacy in their own unique national heritage and in establishing ties with the people of their national group;

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2.  the existence of the federal system, which affords a political-administrative apparatus through which these minority elites can pursue their national-group interests and objectives; and
3.  the continued political, economic, and cultural hegemony enjoyed by the Great Russian majority and the national chauvinism manifested by this group vis-à-vis the minority nationalities.[61]

Both because of the refocusing of nationalist demands onto the regime sector and because of impending changes in the leadership of the CPSU, the question of elite-regime relations is more immediate than that of regime-community relations. Indeed, the former by and large determine the constraints under which the latter evolve. The question becomes: What are the likely attitudes of the future elite towards elite-regime and regime-community relations?

Those attitudes are constrained by the following structural considerations:

1.  The internal differentiation of the elite and regime sectors will not be reversed. As a result, the issue of developmental rationality—intersectoral as well as interregional—will continue to be debated, and specialists in other policy-related legitimacy-supportive fields will also continue to participate in policy formulation. That this by itself will motivate them to become overt partisans of political democracy is, however, questionable.
2.  It is fairly certain that overall controls on the community sector will not be tightened. This does not exclude crackdowns in certain limited domains, such as judicial and artistic issues. It is possible that those restrictions will be lifted in the short run (during the Brezhnev succession but before the broader generational turnover) only to be re-imposed in the long run.
3.  The integration of the community into the regime seems likely to provide the most contention within Soviet society. Its concomitant dissident issues, nationality rights and religious autonomy, will likely animate and exacerbate that contention not only in the European U.S.S.R. but also in Soviet central Asia.[62]

The structural constraints on elite-regime relations are thus less equivocal than on regime-community relations. Elite-regime relations are more likely to be stable both during the Brezhnev succession and during the generational turnover that succession will initiate. The stability in elite-regime relations will clarify any ambiguity the transition might involve for regime-community relations. Only after becoming secure in such stability might a new leadership consider encouraging the regime sector to address constructively all the concerns of the community.[63] If the new elite would wish to integrate the community into the regime as fully as possible, the only efficacious move would be to reinforce popular channels of participation and to increase the regime's responsiveness to them. In spite of the enhanced strength of the regime sector vis-à-vis the elite (and, within the latter, of the Central Committee vis-à-vis the Politburo),[64] such a development would probably not imperil the leading role of the

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Politburo in the Party. The leading role of the Party in society, on the other hand, could then be threatened by the evolution of regime-community relations in Soviet central Asia.

The attitudes of regime-sector role occupants are important and may even tip the balance; they are not, however, homogeneous.[65] If behavioral patterns observed in Western polities are also valid in the Soviet Union, then we can predict (1) with some certainty that the receptivity to community-level participation will increase as generational turnover proceeds in the CPSU apparat below the Central Committee level,[66] and (2) with even greater certainty that such receptivity will be enhanced if new recruits to key regime-sector roles have training not in engineering or other technical specialties but in the social sciences and humanities.[67] The latter development seems perhaps less likely, but observers of Soviet politics learn to anticipate the unexpected. The attitudes of such key personnel as obkom first secretaries, concerning responsiveness to participation in different issue areas, depends at least in part upon the decisions of the future elite concerning pre− and post–recruitment criteria for advancement within the CPSU.

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[Notes]

[Note 60]. The meaning of this phrase coincides with Jowitt's definition of community building: "attempts at creating new political meanings which are shared by elites and publics and which possess an informal, institutional, and expressive character." Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944–1965 (Berkeley, [Calif.], 1971), p. 74, n. 1.

[Note 61]. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, "The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR," Problems of Communism, 23 (May–June 1974), 10.

[Note 62]. For a survey of some of the problems the political system faces in this region, see Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, L'Empire éclaté (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), pp. 233–70.

[Note 63]. See, however, Connor, "Generations and Politics in the USSR," Problems of Communism, 24 (September–October 1975), 20–31, esp. 24–26, for the view that Soviet political culture inculcates political inefficacy and impotence among its citizenry.

[Note 64]. Hough goes so far as to suggest that "unwritten constitutional restraints of the type found in Great Britain are slowly beginning to develop in the Soviet Union." Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, [Mass.], 1979), p. 555.

[Note 65]. See Stewart, "Diversity and Adaptation in Soviet Political Culture: The Attitudes of the Soviet Political Elite," in Jane P. Shapiro and Peter J. Potichnyj, eds. Change and Adaptation in Soviet and East European Politics (New York, 1976), pp. 18–39.

[Note 66]. See Putnam, "The Political Attitudes of Senior Civil Servants in Britain, Germany, and Italy," British Journal of Political Science, 3 (July 1973), 257–90.

[Note 67]. See Putnam, "Elite Transformation in Advanced Industrial Societies: An Empirical Assessment of the Theory of Technocracy," Comparative Political Studies, 10 (October 1977), 383–412.

The complete article is available in    full text.