Dissent and SocialismDileep Padgaonkar ON SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY By Roy A. Medvedev Macmillan, London, 1975, 12.00 VOLUME I NUMBER 3 July - September 1976 Much to the chagrin of their leftist sympathizers
in the outside world more and more Soviet dissidents refuse to subscribe to any
shade of socialist theory and practice. Unlike a growing number of socialists
in, say, France or Italy, they seem to be convinced that socialism cannot rhyme
either with freedom or with greater social justice. This is why they rule out
any prospect of Soviet society reforming itself in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, they fear
that as the Kremlin reinforces its economic and technological ties with the West
it will take care to snuff out every whimper of domestic protest against the
inequities of the regime.
Is it any wonder after all this that Alexander
Solzhenitsyn finds a favourable echo to his stringent anti-Communist campaign
only in the most conservative and old-style social democrat circles in North
America and Western Europe? To a somewhat lesser extent, this is also true of
Andrei Sakharov who now appears to have renounced his earlier faith in democratic
socialism. As for the noted historian, Andrei Amalrik, he has reiterated, on
his recent arrival in Holland as an exile, that it is no longer possible for
him to adhere to any all-embracing ideology, especially when it dons a ‘scientific’
cloak.
Perhaps the only notable exception to this general
rule is the historian and sociologist, Roy A. Medvedev. It would be no
exaggeration to say that among the leading Soviet dissidents he alone gives the
western leftists some reason to hope that socialism can and indeed will be rejuvenated
some day. For, Medvedev’s Marxist and even Marxist-Leninist ardour has been
strengthened rather than dimmed by his bitter hostility to Stalinism (See his Let
History Judge).
The author's
Marxism-Leninism, however, owes little to the doctrinal aridities of the Soviet
establishment. He does not treat it as a closed system but only as a method to
analyse social and economic phenomena. This is all too evident from this book
where he chooses to be empirical and pragmatic rather than ideological. The
ideological elements come into play when he makes copious references to Marx,
Engels and Lenin to assert that without democracy there can be no socialism.
As a matter of fact, the
author ascribes all the major ills afflicting Soviet society today to the absence
of a real participation of citizens in the ... Table of Contents >> |