The Thinking Reed

In the West, Roy Medvedev is seen as practically the sole supporter of Marxism in our country. Some émigrés also try to depict the situation like that,61 but this does not fit the facts at all. Of course, Roy Medvedev deserves the international recognition given to his works of research, which differ so markedly from the dogmatic philosophizing of the Soviet New Right, but he is far from being a lonely Don Quixote or a fighter defending the last barricade. On the other hand, although Medvedev’s writings are published abroad, he can be regarded rather as a representative of legal Marxism in the USSR. He expounds the same system of ideas that we can find in the works of Karyakin, Batishchev, Butenko or Vodolazov, except that because his books are not subject to censorship, he is able to formulate his conclusions openly.

Moreover, Medvedev is one of the theoreticians of a moderate tendency. There are among Soviet Marxists, including those who publish legally, theoreticians who draw more radical conclusions and go much further in their critique of statocracy and neo-Stalinism.62 Samizdat helps to formulate the ultimate conclusions drawn by these critics. At the end of the seventies a number of periodicals of a socialist tendency appeared together. The best-known of these was the journal Poiski, which carried articles not only by Marxists but also by representatives of other trends (for example, V. Sokirko-Burzhuademov collaborated with Poiski). In Leningrad the New Left published the journal Perspektivy. Both journals later ceased to appear, as a result of repressive measures. Leningrad socialists belonging to the Kolokol group (Ronkin and Khakhaev) issued in samizdat the symposium Cherez Top [Through the Swamp], in which they tried to revive the ‘orthodox Marxism’ of G.V. Plekhanov. In Moscow in 1977 an almanac of socialist thought appeared, under the title Varianty. Between 1977 and 1980 four issues came out, but in 1981 publication ceased. Although much of its material could have been better, Varianty was a very interesting and successful attempt to enliven the theoretical discussion in samizdat.63 Typical of Varianty was its endeavour to utilize the ideas of Gramsci, of Western neo-Marxism, Kardelj and other Yugoslav theoreticians, and also, in some articles, contemporary Social Democratic ideas. The new achievements of socialist thought in the West were bound to be of help in studying Soviet problems, but most of the articles in Varianty were not mere students’ expositions of foreign works. Besides Varianty, several other samizdat publications of a Left tendency appeared at the end of the seventies.

However, legal Marxist literature differs in many ways from samizdat, and for the better. Some of the wiser dissidents have admitted the superiority of a number of censored publications. V. Chalidze writes that in legal literature, authors and scholars wage a constant struggle for culture against the statocracy:

This is that section of the intelligentsia which, in full continuity with previous generations, is creating and upholding Russian culture and the culture of other peoples. Although the émigrés boast of famous names and of the uncensored character of their work, our country’s culture is being created by the group mentioned, and not by the émigrés, despite the need sometimes to use phraseology acceptable to the authorities.64

There is no abuse of the authorities in legal literature, but from time to time its contributors show great intellectual boldness, bringing forward new ideas, which samizdat often fails to do.