![]() ![]() Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their comprehensive study Soviet Communism – A New Civilisation referred to “the great, and, as it is often suggested, the growing evil of bureaucracy. “Bureaucracy: a system for controlling or managing a country, company or organisation that is operated by a large number of officials who are employed to follow rules carefully, or the officials, or the system of rules.” – not particularly helpful. The Cambridge international dictionary gives us the following definition: It could imply a lack of democracy it could imply corruption it could imply inefficiency through excessive red tape it could imply excessive centralism it could imply that the USSR was run by pure paperwork with insufficient ‘action’ and so on. VI Lenin and Josef Stalin certainly never hesitated to complain about the state of bureaucracy in the USSR, but presumably they used the term in a completely different way to the average bourgeois historian, for whom the term is nothing less than a convenient blanket dismissal of the Soviet Union and communism. ![]() It leaves the reader with a ‘carte blanche’ to assume whatever negative things about the Soviet Union he might like. Herein lies its advantage for critics of the Soviet Union. ‘Bureaucracy’ is a vague term, with a hundred possible meanings. ![]() The first question presents the first problem. The following presentation was given by Carlos Rule to the Stalin Society in September 2001. ![]()
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