Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Before the perestroika reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev that promoted a more liberal form of socialism, the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state that aimed to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union's ideological commitment to achieving communism included the national communist development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat the predominant prevailing global system of capitalism and promote the goals of Bolshevism. The state ideology of the Soviet Unionand thus Marxism–Leninismderived and developed from the theories, policies, and political praxis of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism was the ideological basis for the Soviet Union. It explained and legitimized the CPSU's right to rule, while explaining its role as a vanguard party. For instance, the ideology explained that the CPSU's policies, even if they were unpopular, were correct because the party was enlightened. It was represented to be the only truth in Soviet society, and with it rejected the notion of multiple truths. In short, it was used to justify CPSU Leninism as being a means to an end. The relationship between ideology and decision-making was at best ambivalent, with most policy decisions taken in the light of the continued, permanent development of Marxism–Leninism, which, as the only truth, could not by its very nature become outdated.Despite having evolved over the years, Marxism–Leninism had several central tenets. The main tenet was the party's status as sole ruling party. The 1977 Constitution referred to the party as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state and public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." State socialism was essential, and from Joseph Stalin until Mikhail Gorbachev official discourse considered private social and economic activity such as capitalism as "retarding" the development of Russian collective consciousness and of the Soviet economy. Gorbachev supported privatization to a degree, but based his policies on Vladimir Lenin's and Nikolai Bukharin's view on the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and supported complete state ownership over the commanding heights of the economy. Unlike liberalism, Marxism–Leninism stressed not the importance of the individual, but rather the role of the individual as a member of a collective. Thus defined, individuals had only the right to freedom of expression if it safeguarded the interests of the collective. For instance, in the 1977 Constitution Marxism–Leninism it was stated that every person had the right to express their opinion, but that opinion could only be expressed if it was in accordance with the "general interests of Soviet society." In short, the number of rights granted to an individual was decided by the state, and could be taken away by the state as it saw fit. Soviet Marxism–Leninism justified nationalism, and the media portrayed every victory of the Soviet Union as a victory for the communist movement as a whole. In large parts, Soviet nationalism was based upon ethnic Russian nationalism. Marxism–Leninism stressed the importance of the worldwide conflict between capitalism and socialism, and the Soviet press talked about progressive and reactionary forces, while claiming that socialism was on the verge of victory; that the "correlations of forces" were in the Soviet Union's favour. Until its late years of the USSR, the ideology had professed state atheism, and party members were formerly not allowed to be religious. The state professed a belief in the feasibility of total communist mode of production, and all policies were seen as justifiable if it contributed to the Soviet Union's reaching that stage.
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of the socialist mode of production, developed by Lenin. Since Karl Marx barely, if ever wrote about how the socialist mode of production would look like or function, these tasks were left for later scholars like Lenin to solve. His main contribution to Marxist thought is the concept of the vanguard party of the working class. The vanguard party was conceived to be a highly-knit centralised organization which was led by intellectuals, rather than by the working class itself. The party was open only to a small number of the workers, the reason being that the workers in Russia still had not developed class consciousness and therefore needed to be educated to reach such a state. Lenin believed that the vanguard party could initiate policies in the name of the working class even if the working class did not support them, since the vanguard party would know what was best for the workers, since the party functionaries had attained consciousness.Lenin, in light of the Marx's theory of the state, had no qualms of forcing change upon the country. He viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat, in contrast to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as the dictatorship of the majority. The repressive powers of the state were to be used to transform the country, and to strip of the former ruling class of their wealth. Lenin believed that the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production would last for a long period. According to some authors, Leninism was by definition authoritarian. In contrast to Karl Marx, who believed that the socialist revolution would be composed of and led by the working class alone, Lenin argued that a socialist revolution did not necessarily need to be led by or composed of the working class alone, instead contending that a revolution needed to be led by the oppressed classes of society, which in the case of Russia was the peasant class.
Stalinism
Stalinism, while not an ideology per se, refers to Stalin's thoughts and policies. Stalin's introduction of the concept "Socialism in One Country" in 1924 was a major turning point in Soviet ideological discourse. The Soviet Union did not need a socialist world revolution to construct a socialist society, Stalin claimed. Four years later, Stalin initiated his "Second Revolution" with the introduction of state socialism and central planning. In the early-1930s, he initiated collectivization of Soviet agriculture, by de-privatizing agriculture, but not turning it under the responsibility of the state, per se, instead creating peasant cooperatives. With the initiation of his "Second Revolution", Stalin launched a "Cult of Lenin" and a cult of personality centered upon himself. For instance, the name of the city of Petrograd was changed to Leningrad, the town of Lenin's birth was renamed Ulyanov, the Order of Lenin became the highest state award and portraits of Lenin were hung up everywhere; in public squares, factories and offices etc. The increasing bureaucracy which followed after the introduction of a state socialist economy was at complete odds with the Marxist notion of "the withering away of the state". Stalin tried to explain the reasoning behind it at the 16th Congress ;We stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the mightiest and most powerful authority of all forms of State that have ever existed. The highest development of the State power for the withering away of State power —this is the Marxian formula. Is this "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory." But this contradiction springs from life itself and reflects completely Marxist dialectic.
The idea that the state would wither away was later abandoned by Stalin at the 18th Congress, in which he expressed confidence that the state would exist, even if the Soviet Union reached communism, as long as it was encircled by capitalism. Two key concepts were created in the latter half of his rule; the "two camp" theory and that of "capitalist encirclement". The threat of capitalism was used to strengthen Stalin's personal powers, and Soviet propaganda began making a direct link with Stalin and stability in society, claiming that the country would crumble without the leader. Stalin deviated greatly from classical Marxism when it came to "subjective factors", claiming that party members, whatever rank, had to profess fanatic adherence to the party's line and ideology, and that otherwise those policies would fail.
De-Stalinization
After Stalin died and once the ensuing power struggle subsided, a period of de-Stalinization developed, as Soviets debated what Marxism–Leninism would be in the absence of its de facto enforced equivalence with Stalinism. During the Khrushchev Thaw, the answer that emerged was that it would continue to involve central planning to the nearly complete exclusion of market mechanisms, as well as the totalitarian version of collectivism and continuing xenophobia, but that it would no longer involve the extreme degree of state terror seen during the Great Purge era. This ideological viewpoint maintained the secular apotheosis of Lenin, treating the terror aspect of Stalinism as a perversion that had been belatedly corrected, rather than admitting that Lenin himself had built a legacy of state terror. This storyline persisted into the Gorbachev era and even mostly survived glasnost. As Soviet military officer and Lenin biographer Dmitri Volkogonov described it, "Lenin was the last bastion to fall."Concepts
Dictatorship of the proletariat
Lenin, according to his interpretation of Marx's theory of the state, believed democracy to be unattainable anywhere in the world before the proletariat seized power. According to Marxist theory, the state is a vehicle for oppression and is headed by a ruling class, an "organ of class rule". He believed that by his time, the only viable solution was dictatorship since the war was heading into a final conflict between the "progressive forces of socialism and the degenerate forces of capitalism". The Russian Revolution of 1917 was already a failure according to its original aim, which was to act as an inspiration for a world revolution. As a result, the initial anti-statist posture and the active campaigning for direct democracy was replaced with dictatorship. From the perspective of the Bolsheviks, the rationale for this change was Russia's lack of development, its status as the sole socialist state in the world, its encirclement by imperialist powers, and its internal encirclement by the peasantry.Marx, similar to Lenin, considered it fundamentally irrelevant whether a bourgeois state was ruled according to a republican, parliamentarian or constitutionally monarchic political system because this did not change the mode of production itself. These systems, regardless of whether they are ruled by an oligarchy or by mass participation, were ultimately all a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by definition because the bourgeoisie, by the very condition of their class and its interests, would promote and implement policies in their class interests and thus in defense of capitalism. There was a difference, though; Lenin, after the failures of the world revolutions, argued that this did not necessarily have to change under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The reasoning came from wholly practical considerations: the majority of the country's inhabitants were not communists and the party could not introduce parliamentary democracy since that was inconsistent with their ideology and would lead to the party losing power. He therefore concluded that "he form of government has absolutely nothing to do with" the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Bukharin and Trotsky agreed with Lenin, both claiming that the revolution had only destroyed the old, but failing completely in creating anything sort of new. Lenin had now concluded that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not alter the relationship of power between persons, but rather "transform their productive relations so that, in the long run, the realm of necessity could be overcome and, with that, genuine social freedom realised".
It was in the period of 1920–1921 that Soviet leaders and ideologists began differentiating between socialism and communism; hitherto the two terms had been used to describe similar conditions. From then, the two terms developed separate meanings. According to Soviet ideology, Russia was in the transition from capitalism to communism
, socialism being the intermediate stage to communism, with the latter being the final stage which follows after socialism. By now, the party leaders believed that universal mass participation and true democracy could only take form in the last stage, if only because of Russia's current conditions at the time.
In early Bolshevik discourse, the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" was of little significance; the few times it was mentioned, it was likened to the form of government which had existed in the Paris Commune. With the ensuing Russian Civil War and the social and material devastation that followed, however, its meaning was transformed from communal democracy to disciplined totalitarian rule. By now, Lenin had concluded that only a proletarian regime as oppressive as its opponents could survive in this world. The powers previously bestowed upon the soviets were now given to the Council of People's Commissars; the central government was in turn to be governed by "an army of steeled revolutionary Communists ". In a letter to Gavril Myasnikov, Lenin in late 1920 explained his new reinterpretation of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat";
Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority untrammelled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no other meaning but this.
Lenin justified these policies by claiming that all states were class states by nature, and that these states were maintained through class struggle. This meant that the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union could only be "won and maintained by the use of violence against the bourgeoisie". The main problem with this analysis is that the Party came to view anyone opposing or holding alternate views of the party as bourgeoisie. The worst enemy remained the moderates, however, which were "objectively" considered to be "the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class".
Consequently, "bourgeoisie" became synonymous with "opponent" and with people who disagreed with the party in general. These oppressive measures led to another reinterpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in general; it was now defined as a purely economic system. Slogans and theoretical works about democratic mass participation and collective decision-making were now replaced with texts which supported authoritarian management. Considering the situation, the party believed it had to use the same powers as the bourgeoisie to transform Russia, for there was no other alternative. Lenin began arguing that the proletariat, similar to the bourgeoisie, did not have a single preference for a form of government, and because of that dictatorship was acceptable to both the party and the proletariat. In a meeting with party officials, Lenin stated—in line with his economist view of socialism—that "ndustry is indispensable, democracy is not", further arguing that "we do not promise any democracy or any freedom".