Nature and Typology of Different Types of Soviet Conservatism

Abstract

The paper poses the problem of Soviet conservatism. What protective forces and mechanisms were inherent in the Soviet system? Since any society should have its own conservative tendencies, one can also talk about elements of conservatism in the Soviet society, culture and ideology. Nevertheless, reflections on this problem lead to an epistemological difficulty. In what sense can we talk about Soviet conservatism in general? After all, the defining worldview of the Soviet period was Marxist ideology, which was radically revolutionary and progressive. Even the word “conservative” was then perceived in a decisively negative way. Nevertheless, it is noted that in the late Soviet society it was possible to be a Soviet conservative, wishing for the preservation of the USSR but disapproving of communism and Marxism. The paper states that Soviet conservatism cannot be described as a single entity. In different epochs, different types of Soviet conservatism can be distinguished that struggled with each other and contradicted each other. In addition, the distinction between them is a bit of conditional, because all of them were permeated by the revolutionary-progressive elements of the dominant ideology or stood out against a background of the latter. The paper outlines an approximate general typology of Soviet conservatism: cultural-humanistic Soviet conservatism, pro-Leninist Soviet conservatism, Stalinist Soviet conservatism, pro-Stalinist Soviet conservatism, situational Brezhnev conservatism, and Soviet conservatism of non-Soviet authors and thinkers. It states that the USSR was largely brought to the collapse by the defectiveness and insufficiency of its conditionally conservative, protective forces and principles. It is only with a very high degree of conditionality that one can talk about the phenomenon of Soviet conservatism, understanding it as a set of transformed, unnatural, and contradictory conservative and quasi-conservative ideological currents that do not add up to a single whole.