Development of revolutionary theory by the CPSU

Most Progress volumes hide their authors behind an institute. This one puts them on the contents page, twelve of them, one to a chapter, and the list is the most interesting document in the book.

It opens with P. N. Pospelov on Leninism and the building of communism, and follows with F. V. Konstantinov on philosophical thought, A. I. Pashkov on the political economy of socialism, L. A. Leontyev on modern imperialism, N. V. Tropkin on the theory of socialist revolution, S. L. Titarenko on the party, D. I. Chesnokov on the socialist state, V. G. Afanasyev on scientific management, G. Kharakhashyan on the world socialist system, M. V. Iskrov on the international working-class movement, M. I. Kulichenko on the national question, and E. A. Arab-Ogly on the scientific and technological revolution. Between them these men wrote most of the standard Soviet textbooks of their generation.

The unsigned introduction states the commission plainly: the volume "is an attempt to sum up the contribution that has been made by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union towards developing revolutionary theory on a number of major problems after Lenin's death". The period covered is 1924 to 1971, and the last chapter refers to the preparations for the Twenty-Fourth Congress, which met on 30 March 1971. So this was assembled in the run-up to that congress and exported in its aftermath: a stocktaking of Soviet theory, in English, for the Western communist parties and their students, at the moment Brezhnev's leadership was consolidating.

It is the last serious attempt by the Soviet academy to present itself to the world as a living theoretical tradition.

Translated by David Skvirsky. New critical introduction by Dmitry Chasovennikov.