On Socialist Democracy

Roy Medvedev demonstrates, in engrossing and sharp detail, how the vast gulf between Marxist-Leninist principles and official Soviet attitudes and procedures turned vital theory into hollow dogma. Focusing on the rigidities of official ideology, he makes brilliantly clear the ways in which an excessively centralized and cumbersome bureaucratic structure was disastrous for the economic, intellectual, and moral development of Soviet society—keeping it dangerously insular in an era of increasing internationalism.