Recent Soviet development debates : the 'third world' and the USSR

Abstract

This thesis investigates three layers of Soviet debate since the mid 1960s about problems of development. A protracted debate about the importance of 'socialist orientation' in the third world is considered principally as a dispute between conservative officials and liberal critics about the significance for Soviet foreign policy of dependent allies in a global struggle with imperialism. A parallel debate about the prospects for a capitalist transformation of the third world is evaluated mainly as the first phase of a substantial discussion amongst leading scholars searching for an adequate theory of the developing world. A subterranean debate about the nature of modem Soviet society is presented as an example of the profound criticism of Brezhnev's regime which some leading scholars were able to make in print during the 'years of stagnation'. These empirical interpretations are based on two theoretical arguments, which establish the main historical contexts of Soviet development debates and the position of an outside reader as someone necessarily concerned with the same questions as the participants in the debates. The thesis demonstrates the intellectual achievements of a group of committed Soviet scholars, whose thought was not constrained by a dogmatic system of censorship. By showing the openness of Soviet discussions to a foreign interpreter, it questions the view that 'Marxism-Leninism' has constituted the language of recent development debates in the USSR.