Notwithstanding historical hindsight claiming Potemkin elections, show trials and other such closely-managed spectacles, and the fact that being an insider may not always enhance but rather limit one's perspective, it is worth understanding why one might be so enamoured with such displays.

In society writ large, there was genuine civic engagement through youth and civic organizations in the more quotidian aspects (i., maintenance) where there weren't such before with so broad a popular base. If in the Soviet classroom there was political tension and shortfalls of resources, there was (it is claimed) abolition of corporal punishment (p. Limitations of constitutionalism aside, and with cringeworthy caveats that it excuses Thermidorian misogyny in the reintroduced restrictions on abortion, the sweeping and dramatic historic change in popular practices represent something worthwhile. 'All Soviet citizens are, in a sense, civil servants.' (p.

Such is the familiar central thesis of this book.Īs an historical insider's view, and an insight into at least ostensible and likely in many ways actual functionality of early (20s-30s) Soviet civil society, it is provocative and genuinely inspiring. Dictatorship is the temporary safeguard against threats to nascent democracy, which will wither as democracy is able to extend itself ever further.

Soviet democracy pat sloan