Soviet Domestic Policy in the Postwar World

Analysis of the position of the Soviet Union in the postwar world may logically begin with internal policy. Lenin himself invited this approach when he wrote: “There is no more erroneous nor harmful idea than the separation of foreign and internal policy.”It is audacious for an outsider to predict the future course of Soviet policy. Too many factors which only Soviet leaders can know enter into the decisions. Nevertheless, we Americans are about to enter a period in which the Soviet Union will play a major rôle. Our situation demands that we know our neighbor, and this paper is directed to that end. It will discuss the various aspects of outstanding importance from which internal policy is formulated.Political Theory. Soviet statesmen have retained their basic thinking as to the character of the Soviet state. Commissar Vyshinsky twice restated it publicly during the war itself. In 1942, he told the Soviet Academy of Sciences that “the Soviet State, as a state of the proletarian dictatorship, must be a new type of democratic state for the proletariat and the propertyless, in general, and a new kind of dictatorship against the bourgeoisie.”