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Second Edition
Robert H. McNeal
!'a\
A SPECTRUM BOOK
PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
LibTary of CongTeu Cataloging in PubUcation DOIIJ
McNEAL, RoBERT HATCH
The Bolshevik tradition.
(A Spectrum Book)
First ed. published in 1963 under title: The
Bolshevik tradition: Lenin, Stalin, Khruhchev.
Include bibliographical reference and index.
I. Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 187o-1924. 2. Stalin,
Ioif, 1879-1953. 3. Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich,
1894-1971. 4. Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906--
5. Russia-Politics and government-1917- 6. Com
munism-Russia. I. Title.
DK268.AIM3 1975 335.43'0947 74-20922
ISBN Q-13-{}79772-3
ISBN Q-13-{}79764-2 pbk.
A SPECTRUM BOOK
10 9 8 7 6 5
Preface ix
Dekhrushchevization 169
Index 205
PREFACE
In the eleven years since the original publication of this book a good
deal of additional wri ting about the hi story of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union has appeared. It has been one of the most actively
researched fields of study in all of political science and hi story. This is
particularly true of the early years of Russian M arxism, generally true
of the pre-Stalin years of Soviet power, and signi ficantly less true of the
Stali n era. And, of course, there is a continuing stream of publication
on more or less current Soviet affairs. In the light of this substanti al
increment to the library of m ateri als on Russian Communism, I was
obliged to ask myself if it was desirable to reissue, with only minor
changes, the 1 963 edition of thi s book. I concl uded that it was desir
able, because the work is not i ntended as a comprehensive text but
rather as an extended argument concerni ng the problem of continuity
and change in this movement. It seems to me that the large volume of
new writing since 1 963, for all i ts many merits, does not dimi nish the
pertinence of the arguments advanced in this book. Questions of this
sort are never "settled," and grounds for disagreement with my opin
ions were equally present in 1 963 and at the present writi ng. All that
I would claim for the interpretations in this book is that they represent
a school of thought (not by any means my invention) that deserves a
heari ng as much, i f not more, today as it did in 1 963.
As for the increment of ten years to the history of Russi an Commu
nism since the fall of Khrushchev, I suggest that it fits very well into
the older tradi tion. In the early period of the supposedly transitional
Brezhnev-Kosygi n administration, there was cause to wonder about the
fate of authority in the Soviet poli tical system. Would one man be able
to establish substanti al personal control? Was the supremacy of the
party in the system in decline? For some time I suspected that my argu
ment was too schematic and failed to take into account the forces for
change in the Soviet Union. It now seems to me that these apprehen
sions were unnecessary, that the nature of the institution of the party
is such that the role of individual leadership within the party, and of
the party within the entire system, is fairly stable. The Brezhnev ad
ministration and its coming to full bloom has its share of peculiari ties,
PREFACE
but I was impressed, in trying to write the new chapters of this book,
with how readily the main lines fell into place as an extension of the
previous six decades of the Bolshevik tradition.
Robert H. McNeal
Leverett, Massachusetts
March, 1974