Western theory of Communism

Communism and Political Culture Theory 
Gabriel A. Almond 
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Comparative PoUtics, Volume 15, Issue 2 (Jan., 1983), 127-138. 
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Communism and Political Culture Theory 
Gabriel A . Almond 
A Test of Political Culture Theory 
The success or failure of communist regimes in transforming the attitudes and 
behavior of populations may constitute a test of the explanatory power of po- 
litical culture theory.^ We may view communist regimes as natural experi- 
ments" in attitude change. Such regimes seek and usually succeed in estab- 
lishing organization and communication media monopolies, as well as pene- 
trative police and internal intelligence systems. Ideological conformity is re- 
warded; deviation is heavily penalized. Communities and neighborhoods 
come under the surveillance of party activists. Children of all ages are or- 
ganized in party -related formations, and school instruction places emphasis on 
appropriate ideological indoctrination. In addition to this powerful array of in- 
stitutional and communication controls, the communist movement has a 
clear-cut, explicit set of attitudes, beliefs, values, and feelings that it seeks to 
inculcate. 
Political culture theory imputes some importance to political attitudes, be- 
liefs, values, and emotions in the explanation of political, structural, and be- 
havioral phenomena . national cohesion, patterns of political cleavage, 
modes of dealing with political conflict, the extent and the character of par- 
ticipation in politics, and compliance with authority. Political culture has 
never seriously been advanced as the unidirectional cause" of political 
structure and behavior, although political culture theorists have been repre- 
sented as taking such a position by some critics.^ The relaxed version of po- 
litical culture theory . the one presented by most of its advocates . is that the 
relation between political structure and culture is interactive, that one cannot 
explain cultural propensities without reference to historical experience and 
contemporary structural constraints and opportunities, and that, in turn, a 
prior set of attitudinal patterns will tend to persist in some form and degree 
and for a significant period of time, despite efforts to transform it. All these 
qualifications and claims are parts of political culture theory. The argument 
0010-41 591831011 5-0001 $06.00/1 J27 
Â© 1983 The City University of New York 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
would be that however powerful the effort, however repressive the structure, 
however monopolistic and persuasive the media, however tempting the in- 
centive system, political culture would impose significant constraints on ef- 
fective behavioral and structural change because underlying attitudes would 
tend to persist to a significant degree and for a significant period of time. This 
is all that we need to demonstrate in order to make a place for political culture 
theory in the pantheon of the explanatory variables of politics. 
The communist experience is particularly important as an approach to test- 
ing political culture theory because from one point of view it represents a gen- 
uine effort to "falsify" it. The attitudes that communist movements encounter 
in countries where they take power are viewed as false consciousness . 
whether they be nationalism, religious beliefs, liberal-pluralistic views, ethnic 
subcultural propensities, or attitudes toward economic interests. These at- 
titudes are viewed as the consequences of preexisting class structure and the 
underlying mode of production, as transmitted by associated agents of indoc- 
trination. Communist movements either eliminate or seek to undermine the 
legitimacy of these preexisting structures and processes and replace them with 
a quite new and thoroughly penetrative set. If they succeed in some reasonable 
length of time . let us say, a generation . in transforming attitudes in the de- 
sired direction, we might conclude that political culture theory has been fal- 
sified, that it is a weak variable at best. 
Surely communist takeovers are the best historical experiments we have for 
these purposes. In addition, there are quite a few of them; they have occurred 
in different cultural-developmental settings; and most of them have been in 
operation for a generation. The principal problem with this approach to testing 
theory is that it leaves much to be desired as an experimental test. The 
laboratories" are not open to investigators; the data are spotty and in large 
part inferential. And finally the scale and the intensity of the efforts underta- 
ken to change attitudes have varied from one country to another. The experi- 
ences of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia are quite different from those 
of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Yugoslavia. 
One further intriguing point about this topic is that it represents a good il- 
lustration of a payoff for theory derived from area case studies. From this 
point of view the reader should not expect a contribution to the depth of 
knowledge about an area but an exploitation of findings in an effort to de- 
velop theory. 
Political Culture Theory In Marxism and Leninism 
This utilization of communist experience to test political culture theory fits 
congenially into the great themes of Marxist and Leninist ideology. The term 
128 
Gabriel A . Almond 
has come into increasing usage in Soviet and East European social science. 
Stephen White notes that Lenin employed the term and that Brezhnev used it 
also.^ Georgi Shaknazarov, the president of the Soviet Political Science Asso- 
ciation, in an article published in Pravda on January 17, 1979, announcing the 
meeting of the International Political Science Association in Moscow, listed 
political culture as one of the three major subjects of political science. He de- 
fined political culture as the participation of diverse social opinions in poli- 
tics, the political culture of the people and political culture training, the regu- 
lation of social-political attitudes." He presented this topic as being at the 
same level of importance as the study of the state and the political system and 
the study of foreign policy and international relations. 
Aside from such indications of terminological receptivity, the phenomena 
of political culture have been accorded an important place in communist the- 
ory, although the terms employed by Marx, Lenin, and contemporary com- 
munist scholars are ideology, consciousness, spontaneity, economism, and 
the like. In the works of Marx and Engels, political culture phenomena are 
important intervening variables; in Lenin's political culture . in particular, 
elite political culture . is the independent variable. Indeed, an elite possessed 
of a particular political culture in the sense of an indoctrinated communist 
party and an objective revolutionary situation" very broadly defined are the 
necessary and sufficient conditions of communist revolution. No one can read 
Lenin's organizational text. What Is to Be Done, without becoming aware of 
how much importance he attached to the proper indoctrination of the com- 
munist party, the unambiguous explication of beliefs, procedures, and appro- 
priate affective modalities. 
For Marx, a changed political consciousness was a consequence of under- 
lying structural alterations . it developed gradually at first and changed its 
cognitive content and affective tone as the means of production and class 
characteristics and relations changed. Marx predicted that at certain points in 
the historical process, for example, at the point of extreme proletarian "im- 
miseration," the cultural transformation would be more rapid. Although the 
concepts of political socialization and elite political culture are present in 
Marxism, they are not weir developed. According to Marx, capitalist ideology 
gradually loses its force as its deviation from reality becomes increasingly 
plain. Men are rational actors; the leaders "catch on" first, the followers soon 
after. The transformation of political culture occurs in bursts and is congruent 
with major structural changes . ^the dictatorship of the proletariat, the intro- 
duction of socialism and of communism. The learning process may be slow, 
but it is sure. 
Marxism is thus a structural theory. Marx would probably have sided with 
Brian Barry, Carole Pateman, and Ronald Rogowski about the priority of 
structure in the causal interaction with attitude, belief, and feeling. Changes in 
129 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
culture follow inevitably from changes in structure; cultural properties have a 
consequential relation to structure. Attitudinal variables explain lead and lag 
in the processes of historical change and hence may be viewed as intervening 
rather than independent variables. 
It is clear from the Leninist strategy of elite and mass political socialization 
that Lenin understood the interactive character of structural-cultural relation- 
ships. He believed in the possibility of indoctrinating a revolutionary elite, in 
other words, transforming its political culture. But he did not believe that the 
revolutionary indoctrination of the masses was possible. Ordinary workers 
and peasants had to be manipulated into revolution by appealing to their im- 
mediate values and interests; that is, the revolutionary elite would have to 
adapt their revolutionary tactics to the cultures of the masses. Lenin expected 
that once a revolution had been attained these subcultural tendencies among 
the workers, peasants, ethnic, and religious groups would persist for some 
unknown length of time until the communist millennium, which would be 
brought about by fundamental structural changes. 
In the Marxism-Leninism currently explicated in the theoretical and social 
science" literature of socialist countries, the full conceptual framework of 
political culture theory is employed. It is easy to see why the term has been 
adopted by socialist social scientists. Although the term subculture was not 
employed until recently, it has always been assumed that each class under 
capitalism has its own subculture, which, in turn, imposes a constraint on 
communist strategy and tactics. The peasantry under capitalism can be 
mobilized for land reform but not for socialism. Even under socialism, re- 
sidual peasant proprietary attitudes persist and impose limits on policy. The 
working class is inclined toward * 'bread and butter" economic goals, not so- 
cialist ones, and the persistence of such residual attitudes under socialism af- 
fects productivity and public policy. An incentive system inconsistent with the 
egalitarian values of communism must be continued to take account of these 
propensities. Professionals and technical specialists continue to be seduced by 
the values and special interests of their professions; these cultural propensities 
persist under sociahsm and explain the continuous struggles between the party 
and various specialists in the bureaucracy and the society. 
Ethnicity as an ineradicable basis of subculture manifests itself, according 
to Marxist- Leninist doctrine, in secessionist and autonomist tendencies. 
Under capitalism, ethnicity can be mobilized in the form of liberation move- 
ments affiliated with or led by indoctrinated communists. Under socialism, 
ethnicity persists, justifying federal governmental arrangements. Ethnic sub- 
cultural identities as expressed in linguistic, literary, and cultural forms, as 
well as cuisine, costumes, festivals, and the like, are acknowledged as legiti- 
mate and reconcilable with socialist univeralism. Religious subcultures are 
viewed as basically reactionary formations fostering vestigial attitude pat- 
130 
Gabriel A . Almond 
terns. Accommodations to religious communities under socialism, in contrast 
to ethnicity, are expedient and are entered into only on tactical political 
grounds. 
The theme of political culture change is a powerful one in Leninist theory. 
Certain attitudinal changes are assumed to occur in the transition from feudal 
forms of the political economy to capitalist forms and from early capitalist 
forms to later ones. After a communist revolution takes place, certain attitude 
changes are supposed to accompany the shift from the period of the proletar- 
ian dictatorship to the period of socialism, and a set of related structural and 
cultural changes is assumed to be associated with the shift from socialism to 
communism. 
Marxist-Leninist theory has well-articulated views on the agents and the 
processes of political socialization. All the agents of socialization treated in 
the Western socialization literature are to be found in the socialist literature. 
Family, church, school, work place, interest group, political party, the media 
of communication, local government, and government output and perfor- 
mance are all recognized as having some impact on political attitudes and 
culture. The principal distinction made in Leninist theory is between those 
agents of socialization that foster traditional patterns of political culture and 
those that foster rational and appropriate ones. Families, religious bodies, 
ethnic communities, professional groups, and face-to-face communication 
media outside the Communist party and related organizations tend to foster re- 
sidual cultural tendencies, whereas schools, the Communist party and related 
organizations, and the mass media of communication are the principal agents 
of appropriate political socialization. 
Political Culture in Communist Reality 
If we turn from ideological formulations to the political reality of Eastern 
Europe, the picture we get of political attitudes and values is a complex and 
varied one. We may perhaps distinguish three versions of political culture in 
communist countries: (1) the official or ideological political culture that is a 
mix of exhortation and imputation, (2) the operational political culture or what 
the regime is prepared to tolerate and believes it has succeeded in attaining, 
and (3) the real political culture based on evidence such as opinion surveys 
and other kinds of research or on inferences drawn from the media or official 
statements. The distinctions among these three versions of political culture 
need to be elaborated. All communist regimes have some version of the 
Leninist ideological culture, although in those countries that made their own 
revolutions (e.g., Yugoslavia, China, and Cuba), the political culture may 
deviate from the ideal model, from the Soviet version, and from the versions in 
131 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
those countries dominated by the Soviet Union. The operational political cul- 
ture consists of values, attitudes, and feelings that the regime is prepared to 
tolerate at least in the short run, given the universal shortfall from the 
ideological model in all communist countries. This operational model may 
encompass the extreme of Hungary, where Kadar's slogan of the 1960s, He 
who is not against us is with us," represents a substantial admission of defeat 
in efforts undertaken to produce positive culture transformation, to the situa- 
tion in the Soviet Union, where the operational expectations are a good deal 
more positive and are in part supported by reality. 
The difference between what is sometimes called the operational political 
culture and the real political culture is defined in a sense by the battleground 
between the regimes' immediate campaigns and efforts to change attitudes, 
behavior, beliefs, and the affective tone of the population. From this point of 
view we can argue that Kadar's slogan is an acknowledgement that the Com- 
munist party of Hungary had failed to falsify political culture theory or that the 
Czech Spring" is dramatic evidence of a similar sort that a score of years of 
organizational and media monopoly, repression and terror, and powerful in- 
centives had failed to alter in any significant degree the civic propensities of 
the Czechoslovak population. Insofar as the operational political culture itself 
acknowledges the resistance it is encountering and in the degree that it has 
lowered its sights from some reasonable approximation of a Marxist-Leninist 
culture, we can argue that political culture theory survives unfalsified. If in 
addition evidence of a direct sort points to the fact that attitudes and beliefs 
among the population fall significantly short of this official operational 
political culture, then we have even stronger confirmation of the validity of 
political culture theory. 
The ideological political culture in every communist country posits an ideal 
communist man who is both the builder of the new society and a product of its 
institutions and practices. The fullest elaboration of the qualities of this ideal 
communist man is to be found in the Progam of the Communist party of the 
Soviet Union adopted by the 22nd Congress in 1961, in a section entitled 
"The Moral Code of the Builder of Communism." Some version of this 
moral code (or something very similar in the values and qualities stressed) is 
to be found in a central place in the most important ideological formulations, 
training manuals, school books, and the like of all the communist countries. 
The qualities stressed include "dedication to the Communist cause; love for 
the socialist motherland and other socialist countries; conscientious labor for 
the good of society; a high consciousness of social duty; collectivism and 
comradely mutual assistance and respect; moral integrity in public and private 
life; intolerance of injustice, dishonesty or careerism; friendship and brother- 
hood with the other peoples of the USSR, and solidarity with the workers and 
peoples of other countries; and firm opposition to the enemies of communism, 
peace and freedom."^ 
132 
Gabriel A. Almond 
The evidence does not suggest that any of the communist regimes has suc- 
ceeded in inculcating these values among significant parts of the population. 
Even in the Soviet Union, where the regime has been in substantial control of 
the population for two full generations and where the revolution was led by an 
indigenous elite, the extent of success in remodeling man has been relatively 
modest. Samuel Huntington's claim that the Soviet Union is a dramatically 
successful case of planned political culture change would seem to be exagger- 
ated.^ This is not to argue that there have been no positive accomplishments in 
culture change. The Soviet regime has widespread legitimacy; its centralized, 
penetrating, and relatively unlimited institutions are accepted. A diffuse no- 
tion of socialism has widespread validity, and the acceptance of the obligation 
of sociopolitical activism in the sense of participating in campaigns has strong 
and widespread support. But these limited successes in the center of the com- 
munist world hardly extend into the countryside, into the blue-collar, rela- 
tively uneducated working class, or into the non-European parts of Russia. It 
can be argued that particularly in Asiatic Russia, where traditional-religious 
attitudes and ethnic nationalism display considerable staying power, Soviet 
indoctrinators have had to come to terms with stubborn traditionalism of vari- 
ous kinds. ^ Much of the legitimacy of the Soviet regime, one writer argues, 
results from the fact that the structure of the Soviet system is very much like 
the preexisting tsarist one in the sense of centralization, the extensive scope of 
government, and its arbitrariness. The acceptance of socialism as well as the 
obligation of sociopolitical activism is the success story of communist politi- 
cal socialization, but these attitudes tend to be concentrated in the European 
center and among the educated, professional, and white-collar strata of the 
population.^ Political activism in this context should not be confused with 
civic and political participation; instead, it takes the form of mobilized activity 
and voluntary public service. One writer has described Soviet participation in 
the following terms: 'The many political and administrative activities in 
which Soviet citizens participate take place within a dual framework of con- 
trol. The hierarchical structure of the Soviets, and of the Soviet political system 
in general, serves to coordinate the agenda and priorities of the participatory 
organs at any given moment, concentrating them on centrally determined 
goals, while the supervision of Communist party organs provides control of 
staffing, leadership selection, and auditing of the quality of activities."^ 
This contrast between the ideological and the operational political culture 
creates a certain tension among communist ideologists and students of public 
opinion and the media of communication. With the introduction of public 
opinion research in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1960s, the 
problem of opinion and attitude differences had to be confronted, for it pro- 
duced a polemic of modest proportions among monists" and pluralists." 
A. K. Uledov, a Soviet interpreter of public opinion who presents a monist 
point of view, argued that deviations in opinion from the ideological model 
133 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
reflect a lag between the old and the new, between progressive and backward 
forces. Proponents of a pluralist point of view, reflected in the writing of 
Grushin and to a much greater extent in the work of Polish, Czechoslovak, 
and Yugoslav scholars, argue that under socialism, nonconforming opinion 
may contribute to social progress. Thus the pluralist attempt to legitimate op- 
positional and critical tendencies, thereby reducing the tensions between the 
ideological, the operational, and the real political culture, tends to reduce the 
ideological model to that of a credo by adopting an operative normative model 
more reconcilable with reality. This treatment of pluralism as legitimate, 
however, is distinctly a minor theme in the more conservative communist re- 
gimes, having surfaced primarily in such countries as Poland, Czechoslova- 
kia, and Yugoslavia.^ 
In testing political culture theory in communist countries it is useful to sort 
them into three categories: (1) the Soviet Union itself where the communist 
experiment" began and was carried through by an indigenous communist 
elite; (2) other countries such as Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam 
where the communist revolution was imported and carried out by indigenous 
elites; and (3) countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, 
and East Germany where communist regimes were imposed from the outside. 
For our purposes in this paper we will examine briefly the experience of (1) 
the Soviet Union, (2) Yugoslavia and Cuba, and (3) Poland, Hungary, and 
Czechoslovakia. If political culture theory is to be falsified, we would expect 
to see major change in political culture in the desired direction in all three cat- 
egories and to a larger degree in the case of the Soviet Union because its rev- 
olution was indigenous and has been in operation more than sixty years; to a 
substantial degree in Yugoslavia and Cuba because their revolutions were 
made by indigenous elites; and to a lesser degree in Poland, Hungary, and 
Czechoslovakia because their communist regimes, which have been in exis- 
tence for only a single generation, were imposed on them from the outside and 
have been maintained by the threat or the actuality of Soviet military occupa- 
tion. 
Political Culture in Yugoslavia and Cuba 
In the case of Yugoslavia it may be inappropriate to speak of three versions of 
political culture. The Leninist ideological version is not seriously propagated. 
The operational version is a relatively loosely formulated set of norms and ex- 
pectations that on the basis of empirical evidence are not too far from the real- 
ity of opinion and attitude. These norms include an acceptance of ethnic iden- 
tity and of political autonomy of the various ethnic components, an accep- 
tance of private land ownership among the peasantry, and of religious free- 
134 
Gabriel A . Almond 
dom. The two new elements in Yugoslav political culture are political ac- 
tivism and participation and enterprise self-management, which ideologically 
is supposed to represent the fulfillment of the ideal of participation and the es- 
sence of Yugoslav democratic socialism. Here one can distinguish a differ- 
ence between the official political culture and the real political culture. The 
official political culture sanctions classlessness" in participatory patterns; 
but much evidence that has been gathered from studies of political recruitment 
and opinion surveys demonstrates that political participation in the sense of 
officeholding and other forms of activism is biased toward the upper social 
and economic groupings in the population and is dominated by members of 
the League of Communists. Enterprise self-management appears to be effec- 
tive. It involves all levels of workers in matters having to do with wages, 
hours, conditions of labor, and similar trade union issues but not in production 
and other management decisions.^Â® Thus the political leadership of Yugosla- 
via has settled for a set of operational political cultural norms that accommo- 
date prerevolutionary ethnic, religious, and economic propensities and the so- 
cialization agencies that tend to perpetuate them. The novel elements of par- 
ticipation and decentralized socialism have been accepted in a limited way, 
particularly among the educated, advantaged, and politically mobilized strata 
of the population. 
In contrast to Yugoslavia, another country that made its own revolution . 
Cuba . has been subjected to concentrated indoctrination designed to produce 
a new Cuban socialist man." This ideological political culture differs from 
the Leninist one in its lack of emphasis on the party" and its greater empha- 
sis on heroism, selflessness, personalismo , and the propaganda of the deed. It 
appears to draw on a Latin American revolutionary tradition as much as on 
specifically Leninist ideological norms. In two decades of Cuban commu- 
nism, these ideals have been propagated in connection with major campaigns 
of mobilization for purposes of defense, literacy, sugar cane harvesting, and 
revolutionary-military activities abroad. Such evidence as we have from re- 
ports and surveys of one kind or another suggests that these campaigns have 
had moderate success in creating regime legitimacy, the acceptance of the 
norm of activism in the implementation of goals, and the acceptance of so- 
cialism in the diffuse sense of that term. In recent years there is evidence of 
growing bureaucratization, less stress on Utopian ideals and mass mobiliza- 
tion, and more stress on efficiency and regimentation. A pattern similar to that 
in the Soviet Union, in which the Utopian culture of the socialist man takes on 
the proportions of an eschatology and the operational political culture stresses 
compliance with the regime's policies and programs, may emerge. Real 
popular values and attitudes may increasingly take the form of adaptions to 
constraints and incentives as well as according legitimacy to the new institu- 
135 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
Thus our three cases of indigenous communist revolutions . the Soviet 
Union, Yugoslavia, and Cuba . fail to falsify political culture theory. The 
revolutionary aims of creating a "socialist man" have been practically given 
up in the Soviet Union and Cuba and were never seriously pursued in Yugo- 
slavia. The Soviet Union has settled for popular legitimacy, a general belief in 
socialism, and a willingness to participate in campaigns initiated by the re- 
gime. The Yugoslav political elite has tended to accommodate itself to pow- 
erful ethnic commitments, peasant proprietary values, and religious beliefs 
and has successfully inculcated a sense of legitimacy, an acceptance of de- 
centralized socialism, and an obligation to participate. 
In the case of Cuba, a personalist version of Leninism seems to be giving 
way to a more bureaucratic, apathetic relationship between elite and mass, 
with positive culture changes taking such forms as regime legitimacy, a belief 
in socialism," and an acceptance in some sense of the obligation to take part 
in campaigns. 
The changes that have taken place under these relatively favorable cir- 
cumstances are of a limited sort, not of sufficient magnitude and character to 
falsify political culture theory and accord validity to a structural one. 
The CasÂ«s of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia 
The communist experiences in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia offer 
even stronger supports for political culture theory. Communist parties have 
been in control in all three countries for over thirty years, and Soviet troop de- 
ployments and the Brezhnev Doctrine impose constraints on their policies. 
Despite these penetrative pressures and external threats and constraints, pre- 
revolutionary nationalist, religious, economic, and political attitudes have 
persisted and have resulted in the renunciation of sanguine expectations of 
fundamental attitude change. Were the Soviet threat to be neutralized, there is 
little doubt that liberal regimes, even ones initiated by the communist parties 
(as was the case in Czechoslovakia in 1967-68), would be established. Com- 
munist efforts at resocialization might have been counterproductive in the 
sense of having created strong liberal propensities in countries such as Poland 
and Hungary where those orientations were relatively weak in the prerevolu- 
tionary era. 
In Poland after thirty years of revolutionary experience, something like a 
legitimate pluralist regime emerged in 1981, which allowed the new Solidar- 
ity union, the Catholic church, and the army to engage in bargaining relations 
with the Communist party. As of this writing it is not clear which arrange- 
ments will survive the martial law regime. On the positive side, there is evi- 
dence of an acceptance of a diffuse egalitarian socialism among a large pro- 
136 
Gabriel A. Almond 
portion of the Polish population. But the evidence is overwhelming that the 
Polish working class continues to be passionately Polish, Catholic, and 
bread and butter" oriented. ^^ 
In Hungary, peasant proprietary attitudes, reflected in surveys showing that 
private garden plots and household improvements are the preoccupations of 
most of the agricultural population, remain strong. Similarly, religious at- 
titudes remain strong even among young people. Hungarian nationalism 
shows no signs of abating. One writer described the legitimacy of the com- 
munist regime in Hungary in the following terms: "The current standoff in 
Hungary between elites and potential publics is tenuous, but it appears as if 
everyone fears the hazards of questioning the situation too closely. "^^ Al- 
though most Hungarians accept an egalitarian socialism, there is little accep- 
tance of Marxism-Leninism among the population. In Hungary, the reaction 
to ideological indoctrination takes the form of a thoroughgoing depoliticiza- 
tion.^^ 
Of all the communist cases, that of Czechoslovakia presents the strongest 
support for political culture theory. As one writer observed of the period after 
1948, Neither the new economic base nor the new institutional structures 
succeeded in changing the political cultures of Czechs and Slovaks in the di- 
rection which the holders of institutional power desired. If anything, the op- 
posite happened. The old values and beliefs were reinforced. ... If a Czech 
'new man' had been created by 1968, he was, ironically, one more firmly de- 
voted to social democratic and libertarian values than the Czech of 1946. In 
the interactions between structures and cultures it would appear that the domi- 
nant Czech political culture came much closer to changing Czechoslovak 
Communism than Czechoslovak Communism came to procuring acceptance 
of its official political culture. "^^ 
What the scholarship of comparative communism has been telling us is that 
political cultures are not easily transformed. A sophisticated political move- 
ment ready to manipulate, penetrate, organize, indoctrinate, and coerce and 
given an opportunity to do so for a generation or longer ends up as much or 
more transformed than transforming. But we have to be clear about what kind 
of a case we are making for political culture theory. We are not arguing at all 
that political structure, historical experience, and deliberate efforts to change 
attitudes have no effect on political culture. Such an argument would be man- 
ifest foolishness. Major scholarly efforts such as those of Alex Inkeles and 
David H. Smith and Herbert Hyman demonstrate the powerful and 
homogenizing effects of education, the introduction of the mass media, and 
factory employment in very different cultural contexts.^Â® There is a major lit- 
erature of experimental studies on some of the conditions and possibilities of 
attitude change. What all this seems to demonstrate is that man is a complex 
animal who is tractable in some respects and intractable in others. Both the 
137 
Comparative Politics January 1983 
successes and the failures of our communist cases suggest that there is a pat- 
tern to this tractability-intractability behavior, that liberty once experienced is 
not quickly forgotten, and that equity and equality of some kind resonate in 
the human spirit. 
NOTES 
1 . This is a position argued by a number of British specialists on communist countries. See Ar- 
chie Brown and Jack Gray, Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (New 
York: Holmes & Meier, 1977); also, Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (Lon- 
don: Macmillan, 1979). We have benefited greatly from these studies and conclusions. 
2. See inter al. Brian M. Barry, Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy (London: Col- 
lier-Mac mi llan, 1970), pp. 48ff.; Carole Pateman, "The Civic Culture: A Philosophical 
Critique" in Almond and Verba (eds.). The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, Mass.: Little, 
Brown, 1980); and Ronald Rogowski, A Rational Theory of Legitimacy (Princeton, N.J.: 
Princeton University Press, 1976). 
3. Archie Brown and Jack Gray, Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States 
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977), p. 58. See also White's book-length treatment of this sub- 
ject, op. cit. 
4. Stephen White in Archie Brown and Jack Gray, Political Culture and Political Change in 
Communist Countries (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977), pp. 35-36. 
5. See Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics, op. cit., pp. 114ff. 
6. Ibid., p. 95; See also Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and 
Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer- 
sity Press, 1974), pp. 322ff. 
7. Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics , op. cit. , chaps. 3 and 4. For a detailed 
analysis of participation in the Soviet Union, see Theodore H. Friedgut, Political Participation in 
the USSR (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), chap. 1 and pp. 307ff. 
8. Ibid., p. 49. The Soviet regime has succeeded in inculcating a sense of "participatory-sub- 
ject competence" particularly among the educated strata of the society. See G. A. Almond and S. 
Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), and citations and 
discussions in Friedgut, op. cit., pp. 319ff. 
9. Walter D. Connor and Zvi Gitelman, Public Opinion in European Socialist Systems (New 
York: Praeger, 1977), chap. 1. 
10. David Dyker in Brown and Gray, op. cit., chap. 3; Jan Triska and Paul M. Cocks (eds.). 
Political Development in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 158ff. 
1 1 . See Richard R. Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford, Calif.: 
Stanford University Press, 1969); Jorge I. Dominguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, 
Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), chap. 12; Francis Lambert, 
"Cuba: Communist State in Personal Dictatorship" in Brown and Gray, op. cit., chap. 8. 
12. See Connor and Gitelman, op. cit. , chap. 2 and pp. 184ff; Brown and Gray, op. cit. , chap. 
4; Triska and Cocks, op. cit., chap. 5. 
13. Zvi Gitelman in Connor and Gitelman, op. cit., p. 161. 
14. See also Brown and Gray, op. cit., chap. 5; and Triska and Cocks. 
15. Archie Brown and Gordon Wightman, "Czechoslovakia: Revival and Retreat," in Brown 
and Gray, op. cit., p. 189; see also Connor and Gitelman, op. cit., p. 178. 
16. Alex Inkeles and David H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Develop- 
ing Countries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); and Herbert Hyman, The Eduring 
Ejects of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). 
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