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On Medvedev's 'A Modern Conception of Socialism'
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15888 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
1,373 Words |
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Rolf H.W. Theen
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Since the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev to the top leadership post in the Soviet Union in March 1985, there has been a revolution in Soviet information policy. Gone are days when both party and government spokesmen, including the Soviet leadership, as well as the Soviet mass media, addressed Soviet citizens and the world in a monotonous chorus of ideological platitudes. Today the serious problems facing the largest country on earth are candidly discussed in the press, and a far-ranging dialogue has developed between the Kremlin leadership and the representatives of various elite groups. After decades of state-domination, Soviet society, it seems, is slowly coming into its own, perhaps beginning the long road to its emancipation.
The Tass account a recent speech by Politburo member Vadim Medvedev, translated below, is an important and revealing example of the new thinking that is characteristic of top leaders in the Gorbachev administration. Like other public statements by Gorbachev and his supporters, it acknowledges that socialism has fallen behind in the competition with the capitalist world, that under Stalin the humanist essence of socialism was abandoned, that various extraneous features have in effect adulterated the ideological legacy of Lenin, and that the USSR has paid dearly for its isolation from the rest of the world. This particular speech is important not only because of its content, but also because of its timing, the immediate and more remote audience to which it was addressed, and the position of its author in the Soviet scheme of things.
Medvedev's speech was addressed to an international conference of social scientists from the socialist countries. Most likely, this gathering also included a large number of "ideological workers.' One of the purposes of the speech, therefore, was to communicate the thinking of the Moscow leadership in matters of ideology to an audience outside the Soviet Union. This was especially urgent and important because the portfolio of ideology had changed hands in the latest Kremlin shake-up just a few days before the speech was delivered--a deftly executed power play by Gorbachev, which resulted in the removal of two voting members (Andrei Gromyko, 79, and Mikhail Solomentsev, 74) and two nonvoting or candidate members (Pyotr Demichev, 70, and Vladimir Dolgikh, 63) from the Politburo, the election of Gorbachev as the new president and thus head of sate of the USSR, and the leapfrog promotion of Medvedev (over the heads of seven nonvoting members of the Politburo) to full (voting) membership in the country's highest decision-making body.
In the reorganization of the
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