From under the Rubble, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn et al.

RESTORATION OF POLITICS

This is an important book, a major step in the restoration of politics in the USSR. Now, one might find that judgment paradoxical. Restoration of politics? In a country where “everything is political”? Where failing the litmus test of political “loyalty” has been for so long the nightmare of the average citizen? The paradox, however, is only apparent. If politics be the identification, discussion, and weighing of alternative ways of ordering relations between man and the state, it has been dead in the Soviet Union for a long time. The central purpose of the coercion-cum-propaganda enterprise which has flourished for half a century has been the creation of a docile, apolitical population. By and large, that purpose has been well served.

WC

About the Author

Walter Connor

RESTORATION OF POLITICS

This is an important book, a major step in the restoration of politics in the USSR. Now, one might find that judgment paradoxical. Restoration of politics? In a country where “everything is political”? Where failing the litmus test of political “loyalty” has been for so long the nightmare of the average citizen? The paradox, however, is only apparent. If politics be the identification, discussion, and weighing of alternative ways of ordering relations between man and the state, it has been dead in the Soviet Union for a long time. The central purpose of the coercion-cum-propaganda enterprise which has flourished for half a century has been the creation of a docile, apolitical population. By and large, that purpose has been well served.