To be a Bolshevik [electronic resource] : Soviet leaders, ideology, and policy making, 1920s-1930s
Keywords: History.

This dissertation explains why the Bolshevik leaders devised and how they executed key revolutionary policies during the Soviet system's formative period. It argues that their most radical policies were motivated by Bolshevik ideology, whose impact stemmed not from its content, but from the self-referential mode of thought which formed its core. This mode of thought was based on the tautological conviction of its absolute correctness and unlimited power, which made it immune to any criticism. As such, it engendered a pervasive sense of possessing answers to any possible question, solutions for any conceivable problem, and the ability to overcome any obstacle. "To be a Bolshevik" meant more than thinking in terms of Marxist ideas and categories, which provided few concrete guidelines for the actual construction of a socialist utopia. It meant being driven towards radical action even in cases where Marxist teachings failed to provide orientation. As a result, Bolshevik leaders regularly backed themselves into policy dilemmas which they were not equipped to solve. In their attempts to escape from them, the leaders ended up asserting the correctness and feasibility of a blunt and often inherently contradictory course of action, which they then sought to implement with dogged determination. Herein lies the key to understanding the Bolsheviks' tendency to cause and exacerbate crises, their proclivity to pursue crude and outright violent policies, and the resulting dysfunctional, paradoxical, and at worst catastrophic outcomes. The dissertation starts by identifying and explaining the core principles and paradoxes of Bolshevik thought as well as the inherent dilemmas of the resulting "Bolshevik" approach to politics. It then applies this interpretation to explain policy-making processes in two major areas. The first of these case studies examines the genesis of the Soviet planned economy. It shows how the Bolshevik leaders, increasingly frustrated with their continuous failures to guide unruly economic processes onto the presumed, predetermined path towards "Socialism, " convinced themselves of the feasibility of their goals via centralized planning. In the short term, the attempt to implement this vision resulted in the uncontrolled, escalating planning bacchanalia of the first five-year plan period. In the long term, it produced an economic order whose systemic contradictions and shortcomings ultimately spelled the failure of the Soviet experiment at large. The second case study examines the evolution of the Bolsheviks' approach to the complex problem of agriculture and the peasantry. In their attempts to simultaneously integrate "the village" into, and harness it for, the project of "socialist construction, " the leaders pursued contradictory goals at various levels. As a result, their policies led into a self-induced intellectual and political cul-de-sac. The leaders' growing frustrations with the persistent failure of their schemes to materialize, along with the categorical insistence on the correctness of their course, paved the way for the Bolsheviks' disastrous all-out assault on the Soviet village in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The thesis is based on a close, hermeneutic reading of the leaders' deliberations at various stages in the policy-making process. Through the examination of the Bolsheviks' statements regarding underlying assumptions and dispositions as well as logical lacunae and contradictions, I demonstrate that the patterns of "Bolshevik" thought were crucial for guiding the leaders' political actions. Altogether, the dissertation combines a new interpretation of the role and significance of Bolshevik ideology with a reassessment of central questions in Soviet political and economic history. It illuminates how the inherent contradictions and dilemmas of Bolshevik thought directly informed major political decisions that determined the trajectory and fate of the entire Soviet experiment. Thus the dissertation contributes to ongoing, cross-disciplinary efforts to explain the origins of the pathologies and paradoxes that characterized the Soviet system.