On socialist democracy

by Рой Медведев, Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev

On Socialist democracy

Genres: History, Politics

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1975

About the author

Рой Александрович Медведев (14 ноября 1925, Тифлис) — советский и российский публицист, закончил философский факультет ЛГУ, доктор педагогических наук, профессор, политический деятель, один из представителей левого крыла диссидентского движения в СССР. Автор работ по истории. Брат-близнец учёного-геронтолога, диссидента Ж. А. Медведева.

Reviews

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why this isn't a more read or cited book on to-read lists about socialism astounds me. Medvedev does the work of showing in the 70s when this book was published that the USSR and other party-dictatorship socialist states could be reformed and made socialist democracies that would work for the people and the world. An incredible and provocative read, offering a through examination of the USSR's government and economy, critiquing its developments and undemocratic policies that hinder socialist development and the worldwide communist struggle, becoming the undoing of the second (and third) world(s) and the alternative it offered, embers and small flames of which remain. I found out about this through an old revisionist anthology about Stalinism by Tucker, or maybe something by Cohen. These old works are necessary today as they were when they were published, their world is ours, ours theirs, all of us living in the creative and destructive wakes of communism and capitalism, trying to chart a way to a land that might sustain us all.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Roy Medvedev does a good job showing the internal functioning of the soviet bureaucracy, his writing is deeply rooted in the liberal political trend, later followed by Gorbachev, and therfore, tends to be more of a right wing pamphlet than a very critical book.