Ideological Trends in the USSR

Abstract

A survey of current Soviet trends in party and ideology may take as its starting point the political crisis which developed in the Soviet Union in the second half of the year 1964 and led to Khrushchev's downfall. The crisis was a rather complex affair with many issues, trends, and attitudes involved, and it did not lead to any clear-cut solutions. The situation which has developed since Khrushchev's downfall has remained as ambiguous as that which had preceded it. By disassociating itself from its leader, the Soviet ruling group acknowledged tacitly the fiasco of the Khrushchevite policies and ideological conceptions; but they refused to make the acknowledgment explicit or to draw conclusions. Their reticence was not accidental. It reflected the profound embarrassment with which Khrushchev's successors viewed the discomfiture of his policies. Khrushchevism, to put it in a nutshell, had proved itself unable to cope with the many issues posed in the process of de-Stalinization. To have posed those issues was Khrushchiev's historic merit: to leave them unsettled, unclarified and, in many cases, even aggravated was his sad destiny. The legacy of the Stalin era defeated him, and it still over-shadows the Soviet scene today.