Russian/Soviet Revolutions
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The Russian Revolution in 1917 was accomplished through the violent overthrow of the existing government, followed by the complete restructuring of Soviet society. The recent revolution in the Soviet Union was largely bloodless up until the aborted hard-liner response, an attempt to retake the government from the liberal forces then in power. The result of this aborted take-over was quite the opposite of what was intended. Instead of returning conservatives to power, the attempt assured power to even more liberal forces. Once again, Russian society is being restructured, along with the dissolution of the union of the various Russian republics. The seeds of this new revolution can be found in the society of the Soviet Union over its history, a society that was tightly controlled by a growing and complex bureaucracy which intruded into every facet of life. The new revolution has attacked this bureaucratic structure, showing an awareness that much of the stagnation in Soviet society derived from this central core and from the way in which it moved outward to include practically everything in Soviet society. The revolution is a major shift in thinking about the bureaucracy and about the value of centralized control. Pipes (1992) notes that the problem of bureaucratization in Soviet society extends back long before the development of the communist state. He finds that since the 14th century Russian society has been distinguished less by absolutism such as was common to m
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arty but who today continue operating as they did before, knowing what to do because of years of conditioning: "Like czarist and Soviet bureaucrats, these apparatchiki view society as an enemy; they despise democracy in all its manifestations; they hate and fear the West as the source of subversive ideas": (Pipes: p. 31). In other words, they continue to think in the way that led to the change in the first place and thus hinder progress.
Smith (1991) cites a newspaper survey in Russia that asked the people what they saw as the source of the nation's current difficulties, and the overwhelming answer was the government bureaucracy. The people had a choice of 19 different reasons and a blank space to fill in another if they so desired. The results of the poll were as follows:
63% the dominance of bureaucrats
60% corruption and thievery from the state
56% technological backwardness
45% mistaken strategy of national development
35% loss of faith in the ideals of socialism
33% consequences of Stalinism
A second survey was conducted to test the results of the first. In this more extensive survey, 57 percent cited corruption and drunkenness, 42 percent cited technological backwardness, and 41 percent cited the hat
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Communist Party, Democratic Russia, West Pipes, Central Committee, Union Gorbachev, Pipes Soviet, Gorbachev Getting, Russian Revolution, Nicholas II, communist party, soviet union, soviet society, percent cited, russian society, bureaucracy gorbachev, dissolution communist party, technological backwardness, 1992 pp, intellectual elite, foreign policy,
Approximate Word count = 2035
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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