An Ideology in Power: Reflections on the Russian Revolution

by Bertram Wolfe

Overview

Originally published in 1969 and representing a quarter of a century’s work of one of the USA’s most respected scholars in Soviet affairs, this volume discusses the question of what happens to an ideology in power, by focusing on the evolution and uses of Marxism in Soviet practice. As well as analyzing totalitarian behaviour, the author offers advice for Western policy from analysis of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138235939
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/10/2017
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: The Russian Revolution , #13
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Ideology: From Marxism to Marxism-Leninism 1. Marxism and the Russian Revolution 2. Backwardness and Industrialization in Russian History and Thought 3. Das Kapital One Hundred Years Later Part 2: War as the Womb of Revolution 1. War Comes to Russia 2. War Comes to Russia-in-Exile 3. Titans Locked in Combat 4. The Triple Power: The Role of the Barracks and the Street Part 3: Permanent Dictatorship and the Problem of Legitimacy 1. Society and the State 2. Lenin, the Architect of Twentieth-Century Totalitarianism 3. The Durability of Despotism in the Soviet System 4. The Struggle for the Succession 5. The Age of the Diminishing Dictators Part 4: Proletarian Dictatorship as a Higher Form of Democracy 1. Prometheus Bound 2. The Dark Side of the Moon 3. The Forced Labor Reform After Stalin’s Death 4. Elections under the Dictatorship Part 5: The Conditioning of Culture 1. Operation Rewrite: the Agony of the Soviet Historian 2. Party Histories from Lenin to Khrushchev 3. Science Joins the Party 4. Culture and communist Criticism 5. Some Wonders of the Russian Tongue 6. The Great Blackout Part 6: Problems of Foreign Policy 1. Communist Ideology and Soviet Foreign Policy 2. Poland: The Acid Test of a People’s Peace 3. The Convergence Theory in Historical Perspective