Abstract

With the failure of the various reform efforts in Eastern Europe and the increasing realization that not only do these societies have nothing to do with socialism, but they are not even remotely moving in that general direction, the question of their nature, internal dynamics and future possibilities becomes a crucial one. As new social formations, they exhibit conflicts and legitimating internal relations which cannot be readily understood by merely projecting categories derived from the experience of Western capitalist societies. Thus, Viktor Zaslevsky, in the first of a series of contributions on the nature of the USSR, carefully analyzes the importance of the Stalin cult in Soviet social life — both for maintaining the legitimacy of the party's rule in general and shoring up a part of the Brezhnev regime in particular.