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 societykeeping it dangerously insular in an era of increasing internationalism.