In some contexts, "peasant" has a pejorative meaning, even when referring to farm laborers. As early as in 13th-century Germany, the concept of "peasant" could imply "rustic" as well as "robber", as the English term villain/villein. In 21st-century English, the word "peasant" can mean "an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person".
The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s–1960s
as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of
developing countries in general, as the "semantic successor to 'native',
incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones".
The word "peasant" is derived from the 15th-century French word païsant, meaning one from the pays, or countryside; ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.
Social position
FinnishSavonian farmers at a cottage in early 19th century; by Pehr Hilleström and J. F. Martin
Peasants typically made up the majority of the agricultural labour force in a pre-industrial society. The majority of the people—according to one estimate 85% of the population—in the Middle Ages were peasants.
Though "peasant" is a word of loose application, once a market economy had taken root, the term peasant proprietors was frequently used to describe the traditional rural population in countries where smallholders
farmed much of the land. More generally, the word "peasant" is
sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be "lower
class", perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income.
Medieval European peasants
The open field system
of agriculture dominated most of Europe during medieval times and
endured until the nineteenth century in many areas. Under this system,
peasants lived on a manor presided over by a lord or a bishop of the church.
Peasants paid rent or labor services to the lord in exchange for their
right to cultivate the land. Fallowed land, pastures, forests, and
wasteland were held in common. The open field system required
cooperation among the peasants of the manor. It was gradually replaced by individual ownership and management of land.
The relative position of peasants in Western Europe improved greatly after the Black Death had reduced the population of medieval Europe
in the mid-14th century, resulting in more land for the survivors and
making labor more scarce. In the wake of this disruption to the
established order, it became more productive for many laborers to demand
wages and other alternative forms of compensation, which ultimately led
to the development of widespread literacy and the enormous social and intellectual changes of the Enlightenment.
The evolution of ideas in an environment of relatively widespread literacy laid the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution, which enabled mechanically and chemically augmented agricultural production while simultaneously increasing the demand for factory workers in cities, who became what Karl Marx called the proletariat. The trend toward individual ownership of land, typified in England by Enclosure,
displaced many peasants from the land and compelled them, often
unwillingly, to become urban factory-workers, who came to occupy the
socio-economic stratum formerly the preserve of the medieval peasants.
This process happened in an especially pronounced and truncated
way in Eastern Europe. Lacking any catalysts for change in the 14th
century, Eastern European peasants largely continued upon the original
medieval path until the 18th and 19th centuries. Serfdom
was abolished in Russia in 1861, and while many peasants would remain
in areas where their family had farmed for generations, the changes did
allow for the buying and selling of lands traditionally held by
peasants, and for landless ex-peasants to move to the cities.
Even before emancipation in 1861, serfdom was on the wane in Russia.
The proportion of serfs within the empire had gradually decreased "from
45–50 percent at the end of the eighteenth century, to 37.7 percent in
1858."
Early modern Germany
"Feiernde Bauern" ("Celebrating Peasants"), artist unknown, 18th or 19th century
In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the village
well into the 19th century. They belonged to a corporate body and helped
to manage the community resources and to monitor community life.
In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels
of land. A peasant is called a "Bauer" in German and "Bur" in Low German (pronounced in English like boor).
In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who
paid rents and obligatory services to the landlord—typically a nobleman.
Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights,
maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which
handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the
decisions, and tried to arrange advantageous marriages for his children.
Much of the villages' communal life centered on church services and
holy days. In Prussia, the peasants drew lots to choose conscripts
required by the army. The noblemen handled external relationships and
politics for the villages under their control, and were not typically
involved in daily activities or decisions.
Information about the complexities of the French Revolution,
especially the fast-changing scene in Paris, reached isolated areas
through both official announcements and long-established oral networks.
Peasants responded differently to different sources of information. The
limits on political knowledge in these areas depended more on how much
peasants chose to know than on bad roads or illiteracy. Historian Jill
Maciak concludes that peasants "were neither subservient, reactionary,
nor ignorant."
In his seminal book Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1880–1914 (1976), historian Eugen Weber
traced the modernization of French villages and argued that rural
France went from backward and isolated to modern and possessing a sense
of French nationhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He emphasized the roles of railroads, republican schools, and universal
military conscription. He based his findings on school records,
migration patterns, military-service documents and economic trends.
Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was
weak in the provinces. Weber then looked at how the policies of the Third Republic created a sense of French nationality in rural areas. The book was widely praised, but some argued that a sense of Frenchness existed in the provinces before 1870.
A Chinese painting depicting an agricultural scene probably during the Ming dynastyChinese peasants in Kunming
Farmers in China have been sometimes referred to as "peasants" in
English-language sources. However, the traditional term for farmer, nongfu (农夫), simply refers to "farmer" or "agricultural worker". In the 19th century, Japanese intellectuals reinvented the Chinese terms fengjian (封建) for "feudalism" and nongmin (农民), or "farming people", terms used in the description of feudal Japanese society. These terms created a negative image of Chinese farmers by making a class distinction where one had not previously existed. Anthropologist Myron Cohen considers these terms to be neologisms that represented a cultural and political invention. He writes:
This divide represented a radical departure from tradition: F. W. Mote and others have shown how especially during the later imperial era (Ming and Qing
dynasties), China was notable for the cultural, social, political, and
economic interpenetration of city and countryside. But the term nongmin did enter China in association with Marxist
and non-Marxist Western perceptions of the "peasant," thereby putting
the full weight of the Western heritage to use in a new and sometimes
harshly negative representation of China's rural population. Likewise,
with this development Westerners found it all the more "natural" to
apply their own historically derived images of the peasant to what they
observed or were told in China. The idea of the peasant remains
powerfully entrenched in the Western perception of China to this very
day.
Modern Western writers often continue to use the term peasant for Chinese farmers, typically without ever defining what the term means.
This Western use of the term suggests that China is stagnant,
"medieval", underdeveloped, and held back by its rural population.
Cohen writes that the "imposition of the historically burdened Western
contrasts of town and country, shopkeeper and peasant, or merchant and
landlord, serves only to distort the realities of the Chinese economic
tradition".
Latin American farmers
In Latin America, the term "peasant" is translated to "Campesino" (from campo—country person), but the meaning has changed over time. While most Campesinos
before the 20th century were in equivalent status to peasants—they
usually did not own land and had to make payments to or were in an
employment position towards a landlord (the hacienda system), most Latin American countries saw one or more extensive land reforms in the 20th century. The land reforms of Latin America were more comprehensive initiatives that redistributed lands from large landholders to former peasants—farm workers and tenant farmers.
Hence, many Campesinos in Latin America today are closer smallholders
who own their land and do not pay rent to a landlord, rather than
peasants who do not own land.
The Catholic Bishops of Paraguay
have asserted that "Every campesino has a natural right to possess a
reasonable allotment of land where he can establish his home, work for
[the] subsistence of his family and a secure life".
Portrait sculpture of 18th-century French peasants by artist George S. Stuart, in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California
In medieval Europe society was theorized as being organized into three estates: those who work, those who pray, and those who fight. The Annales School of 20th-century French historians emphasized the importance of peasants. Its leader Fernand Braudel devoted the first volume—called The Structures of Everyday Life—of his major work, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century to the largely silent and invisible world that existed below the market economy.
Other research in the field of peasant studies was promoted by Florian Znaniecki and Fei Xiaotong, and in the post-1945 studies of the "great tradition" and the "little tradition" in the work of Robert Redfield. In the 1960s, anthropologists and historians began to rethink the role of peasant revolt in world history and in their own disciplines. Peasant revolution was seen as a Third World response to capitalism and imperialism.
The anthropologist Eric Wolf, for instance, drew on the work of earlier scholars in the Marxist tradition such as Daniel Thorner, who saw the rural population as a key element in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Wolf and a group of scholars criticized both Marx and the field of Modernization theorists for treating peasants as lacking the ability to take action. James C. Scott's
field observations in Malaysia convinced him that villagers were active
participants in their local politics even though they were forced to
use indirect methods. Many of these activist scholars looked back to the
peasant movement in India and to the theories of the revolution in China led by Mao Zedong
starting in the 1920s. The anthropologist Myron Cohen, however, asked
why the rural population in China were called "peasants" rather than
"farmers", a distinction he called political rather than scientific. One important outlet for their scholarly work and theory was The Journal of Peasant Studies.
Marxism–Leninism was the ideological basis for the Soviet Union. It explained and legitimized the CPSU's right to rule, while explaining its role as a vanguard party.
For instance, the ideology explained that the CPSU's policies, even if
they were unpopular, were correct because the party was enlightened. It was represented to be the only truth in Soviet society, and with it rejected the notion of multiple truths. In short, it was used to justify CPSU Leninism as being a means to an end.
The relationship between ideology and decision-making was at best
ambivalent, with most policy decisions taken in the light of the
continued, permanent development of Marxism–Leninism, which, as the only truth, could not by its very nature become outdated.
Despite having evolved over the years, Marxism–Leninism had several central tenets. The main tenet was the party's status as sole ruling party. The 1977 Constitution
referred to the party as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet
society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state and
public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." State socialism was essential, and from Joseph Stalin until Mikhail Gorbachev official discourse considered private social and economic activity such as capitalism as "retarding" the development of Russian collective consciousness and of the Soviet economy. Gorbachev supported privatization to a degree, but based his policies on Vladimir Lenin's and Nikolai Bukharin's view on the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and supported complete state ownership over the commanding heights of the economy. Unlike liberalism, Marxism–Leninism stressed not the importance of the individual, but rather the role of the individual as a member of a collective. Thus defined, individuals had only the right to freedom of expression if it safeguarded the interests of the collective.
For instance, in the 1977 Constitution Marxism–Leninism it was stated
that every person had the right to express their opinion, but that
opinion could only be expressed if it was in accordance with the
"general interests of Soviet society." In short, the number of rights granted to an individual was decided by the state, and could be taken away by the state as it saw fit. Soviet Marxism–Leninism justified nationalism, and the media portrayed every victory of the Soviet Union as a victory for the communist movement as a whole. In large parts, Soviet nationalism was based upon ethnic Russian nationalism.
Marxism–Leninism stressed the importance of the worldwide conflict
between capitalism and socialism, and the Soviet press talked about
progressive and reactionary forces, while claiming that socialism was on the verge of victory; that the "correlations of forces" were in the Soviet Union's favour. Until its late years of the USSR, the ideology had professed state atheism, and party members were formerly not allowed to be religious. The state professed a belief in the feasibility of total communist mode of production, and all policies were seen as justifiable if it contributed to the Soviet Union's reaching that stage.
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of the socialist mode of production, developed by Lenin. Since Karl Marx
barely, if ever wrote about how the socialist mode of production would
look like or function, these tasks were left for later scholars like
Lenin to solve. His main contribution to Marxist thought is the concept of the vanguard party of the working class. The vanguard party was conceived to be a highly-knit centralised organization which was led by intellectuals, rather than by the working class itself. The party was open only to a small number of the workers, the reason being that the workers in Russia still had not developed class consciousness and therefore needed to be educated to reach such a state.
Lenin believed that the vanguard party could initiate policies in the
name of the working class even if the working class did not support
them, since the vanguard party would know what was best for the workers,
since the party functionaries had attained consciousness.
Lenin, in light of the Marx's theory of the state (which views the state as an oppressive organ of the ruling class), had no qualms of forcing change upon the country. He viewed the dictatorship of the proletariat, in contrast to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as the dictatorship of the majority.
The repressive powers of the state were to be used to transform the
country, and to strip of the former ruling class of their wealth. Lenin believed that the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production would last for a long period. According to some authors, Leninism was by definition authoritarian. In contrast to Karl Marx, who believed that the socialist revolution
would be composed of and led by the working class alone, Lenin argued
that a socialist revolution did not necessarily need to be led by or
composed of the working class alone, instead contending that a
revolution needed to be led by the oppressed classes of society, which
in the case of Russia was the peasant class.
While not an ideology per se, Stalinism refers to the thoughts and policies of Stalin
Stalinism, while not an ideology per se, refers to Stalin's thoughts and policies. Stalin's introduction of the concept "Socialism in One Country" in 1924 was a major turning point in Soviet ideological discourse. The Soviet Union did not need a socialist world revolution to construct a socialist society, Stalin claimed. Four years later, Stalin initiated his "Second Revolution" with the introduction of state socialism and central planning. In the early-1930s, he initiated collectivization of Soviet agriculture, by de-privatizing agriculture, but not turning it under the responsibility of the state, per se, instead creating peasant cooperatives. With the initiation of his "Second Revolution", Stalin launched a "Cult of Lenin" and a cult of personality centered upon himself. For instance, the name of the city of Petrograd was changed to Leningrad, the town of Lenin's birth was renamed Ulyanov (Lenin's birth-name), the Order of Lenin became the highest state award and portraits of Lenin were hung up everywhere; in public squares, factories and offices etc.
The increasing bureaucracy which followed after the introduction of a
state socialist economy was at complete odds with the Marxist notion of
"the withering away of the state". Stalin tried to explain the reasoning behind it at the 16th Congress (held in 1930);
We stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, which represents the mightiest and most powerful authority
of all forms of State that have ever existed. The highest development
of the State power for the withering away of State power —this is the
Marxian formula. Is this "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory."
But this contradiction springs from life itself and reflects completely
Marxist dialectic.
The idea that the state would wither away was later abandoned by Stalin at the 18th Congress
(held in 1939), in which he expressed confidence that the state would
exist, even if the Soviet Union reached communism, as long as it was
encircled by capitalism. Two key concepts were created in the latter half of his rule; the "two camp" theory and that of "capitalist encirclement". The threat of capitalism was used to strengthen Stalin's personal powers, and Soviet propaganda began making a direct link with Stalin and stability in society, claiming that the country would crumble without the leader. Stalin deviated greatly from classical Marxism when it came to "subjective factors", claiming that party members, whatever rank, had to profess fanatic adherence to the party's line and ideology, and that otherwise those policies would fail.
After Stalin died and once the ensuing power struggle subsided, a period of de-Stalinization
developed, as Soviets debated what Marxism–Leninism would be in the
absence of its de facto enforced equivalence with Stalinism. During the Khrushchev Thaw, the answer that emerged was that it would continue to involve central planning to the nearly complete exclusion of market mechanisms, as well as the totalitarian
version of collectivism and continuing xenophobia, but that it would no
longer involve the extreme degree of state terror seen during the Great Purge era. This ideological viewpoint maintained the secular apotheosis
of Lenin, treating the terror aspect of Stalinism as a perversion that
had been belatedly corrected, rather than admitting that Lenin himself
had built a legacy of state terror. This storyline persisted into the
Gorbachev era and even mostly survived glasnost. As Soviet military officer and Lenin biographer Dmitri Volkogonov described it, "Lenin was the last bastion to fall."
Either the dictatorship of the landowners and capitalists, or the
dictatorship of the proletariat [...] There is no middle course [...]
There is no middle course anywhere in the world, nor can there be.
—Lenin, claiming that people had only two choices; a choice between two different, but distinct class dictatorships.
Lenin, according to his interpretation of Marx's theory of the state, believed democracy to be unattainable anywhere in the world before the proletariat seized power. According to Marxist theory, the state is a vehicle for oppression and is headed by a ruling class, an "organ of class rule".
He believed that by his time, the only viable solution was dictatorship
since the war was heading into a final conflict between the
"progressive forces of socialism and the degenerate forces of
capitalism". The Russian Revolution of 1917 was already a failure according to its original aim, which was to act as an inspiration for a world revolution. As a result, the initial anti-statist posture and the active campaigning for direct democracy was replaced with dictatorship.
From the perspective of the Bolsheviks, the rationale for this change
was Russia's lack of development, its status as the sole socialist state
in the world, its encirclement by imperialist powers, and its internal
encirclement by the peasantry.
Marx, similar to Lenin, considered it fundamentally irrelevant whether a bourgeois state was ruled according to a republican, parliamentarian or constitutionally monarchic political system because this did not change the mode of production itself. These systems, regardless of whether they are ruled by an oligarchy or by mass participation, were ultimately all a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
by definition because the bourgeoisie, by the very condition of their
class and its interests, would promote and implement policies in their
class interests and thus in defense of capitalism. There was a difference, though; Lenin, after the failures of the world revolutions, argued that this did not necessarily have to change under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The reasoning came from wholly practical considerations: the majority
of the country's inhabitants were not communists and the party could not
introduce parliamentary democracy since that was inconsistent with
their ideology and would lead to the party losing power.
He therefore concluded that "[t]he form of government has absolutely
nothing to do with" the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Bukharin and Trotsky agreed with Lenin, both claiming that the
revolution had only destroyed the old, but failing completely in
creating anything sort of new.
Lenin had now concluded that the dictatorship of the proletariat would
not alter the relationship of power between persons, but rather
"transform their productive relations so that, in the long run, the
realm of necessity could be overcome and, with that, genuine social
freedom realised".
It was in the period of 1920–1921 that Soviet leaders and
ideologists began differentiating between socialism and communism;
hitherto the two terms had been used to describe similar conditions.
From then, the two terms developed separate meanings. According to
Soviet ideology, Russia was in the transition from capitalism to
socialism (referred to interchangeably under Lenin as the dictatorship
of the proletariat), socialism being the intermediate stage to
communism, with the latter being the final stage which follows after
socialism.
By now, the party leaders believed that universal mass participation
and true democracy could only take form in the last stage, if only
because of Russia's current conditions at the time.
[Because] the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, so
corrupted in parts [...] that an organization taking in the whole
proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be
exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy
of the class.
— Lenin, explaining the increasingly dictatorial nature of the regime.
In early Bolshevik discourse, the term "dictatorship of the
proletariat" was of little significance; the few times it was mentioned,
it was likened to the form of government which had existed in the Paris Commune. With the ensuing Russian Civil War
and the social and material devastation that followed, however, its
meaning was transformed from communal democracy to disciplined
totalitarian rule. By now, Lenin had concluded that only a proletarian regime as oppressive as its opponents could survive in this world. The powers previously bestowed upon the soviets were now given to the Council of People's Commissars;
the central government was in turn to be governed by "an army of
steeled revolutionary Communists [by Communists he referred to the
Party]". In a letter to Gavril Myasnikov, Lenin in late 1920 explained his new reinterpretation of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat";
Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority
untrammelled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever,
and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no other meaning but this.
Lenin justified these policies by claiming that all states were class
states by nature, and that these states were maintained through class struggle.
This meant that the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union
could only be "won and maintained by the use of violence against the
bourgeoisie".
The main problem with this analysis is that the Party came to view
anyone opposing or holding alternate views of the party as bourgeoisie.
The worst enemy remained the moderates, however, which were
"objectively" considered to be "the real agents of the bourgeoisie in
the working class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist
class".
Consequently, "bourgeoisie" became synonymous with "opponent" and with people who disagreed with the party in general.
These oppressive measures led to another reinterpretation of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in general; it was now
defined as a purely economic system.
Slogans and theoretical works about democratic mass participation and
collective decision-making were now replaced with texts which supported
authoritarian management.
Considering the situation, the party believed it had to use the same
powers as the bourgeoisie to transform Russia, for there was no other
alternative.
Lenin began arguing that the proletariat, similar to the bourgeoisie,
did not have a single preference for a form of government, and because
of that dictatorship was acceptable to both the party and the
proletariat.
In a meeting with party officials, Lenin stated—in line with his
economist view of socialism—that "[i]ndustry is indispensable, democracy
is not", further arguing that "we do not promise any democracy or any
freedom".
Imperialism is capitalism at a stage of development at which the
dominance of monopolies and finance-capital is established; in which the
export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the
division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which
the divisions of all territories of the globe among the biggest
capitalist powers has been completed.
—Lenin, citing the main features of capitalism in the age of imperialism in Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
The Marxist theory on imperialism was conceived by Lenin in his book, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism (published in 1917).
It was written in response to the theoretical crisis within Marxist
thought, which occurred due to capitalism's recovery in the 19th
century. According to Lenin, imperialism was a specific stage of development of capitalism; a stage he referred to as state monopoly capitalism.
The Marxist movement was split on how to solve capitalism's resurgence
and revitalisation after the great depression of the late-19th century. Eduard Bernstein, from the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SDP), considered capitalism' revitalisation as proof that capitalism
was evolving into a more humane system, further adding that the basic
aims of socialists were not to overthrow the state, but rather to take
power through elections. On the other hand, Karl Kautsky, from the SDP, held a highly dogmatic view, claiming that there was no crisis within Marxist theory. Both of them, however, denied or belittled the role of class contradictions in society after the crisis.
In contrast, Lenin believed that capitalism' resurgence was the
beginning of a new phase of capitalism; this stage being created because
of a strengthening of class contradiction, not because of its
reduction.
Lenin did not know when the imperialist stage of capitalism
began, and claimed it would be foolish to look for a specific year,
however he did assert it began at the beginning of the 20th century (at
least in Europe).
Lenin believed that the economic crisis of 1900 accelerated and
intensified the concentration of industry and banking, which led to the
transformation of the finance capital connection to industry into the
monopoly of large banks." In Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
Lenin wrote; "the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the
old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to
the domination of finance capital." Lenin's defines imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism.
Despite radical anti-imperialism being an original core value of
Bolshevism, the Soviet Union from 1939 onward was widely viewed as a de facto
imperial power whose ideology could not allow it to admit its own
imperialism. Through the Soviet ideological viewpoint, pro-Soviet
factions in each country were the only legitimate voice of "the people"
regardless of whether they were minority factions. All other factions
were simply class enemies of "the people", inherently illegitimate
rulers regardless of whether they were majority factions. Thus, in this
view, any country that became Soviet or a Soviet ally naturally did so
via a legitimate voluntary desire, even if the requesters needed Soviet
help to accomplish it. The principal examples were the Soviet invasion of Finland yielding the annexation of Finnish parts of Karelia, the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and the postwar de facto dominance over the satellite states of the Eastern Bloc under a pretense of total independence. In the post-Soviet era
even many Ukrainians, Georgians, and Armenians feel that their
countries were forcibly annexed by the Bolsheviks, but this has been a
problematic view because the pro-Soviet factions in these societies were
once sizable as well. Each faction felt that the other did not
represent the true national interest. This civil war–like paradox has been seen in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, as pro-Russian Crimeans have been viewed as illegitimate by pro-Ukrainian Crimeans, and vice versa.
The loss by imperialism of its dominating role in world affairs and
the utmost expansion of the sphere in which the laws of socialist
foreign policy operate are a distinctive feature of the present stage
of social development. The main direction of this development is toward
even greater changes in the correlation of forces in the world arena in
favour of socialism."
—Nikolay Inozemtsev,
a Soviet foreign policy analyst, referring to series of events (which
he believed) would lead to the ultimate victory of socialism.
"Peaceful coexistence" was an ideological concept introduced under Khrushchev's rule.
While the concept has been interpreted by fellow communists as
proposing an end to the conflict between the systems of capitalism and
socialism, Khrushchev saw it instead as a continuation of the conflict
in every area with the exception in the military field.
The concept claimed that the two systems were developed "by way of
diametrically opposed laws", which led to "opposite principles in
foreign policy."
The concept was steeped in Leninist and Stalinist thought. Lenin believed that international politics were dominated by class struggle, and Stalin stressed in the 1940s the growing polarization which was occurring in the capitalist and socialist systems.
Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence was based on practical changes which
had occurred; he accused the old "two camp" theory of neglecting the non-aligned movement and the national liberation movements. Khrushchev considered these "grey areas", in which the conflict between capitalism and socialism would be fought. He still stressed that the main contradiction in international relations were those of capitalism and socialism.
The Soviet Government under Khrushchev stressed the importance of
peaceful coexistence, claiming it had to form the basis of Soviet
foreign policy. Failure to do, they believed, would lead to nuclear conflict.
Despite this, Soviet theorists still considered peaceful coexistence as
a continuation of the class struggle between the capitalist and
socialist worlds, just not one based on armed conflict. Khrushchev believed that the conflict, in its current phase, was mainly economical.
The emphasise on peaceful coexistence did not mean that the Soviet Union accepted a static world, with clear lines.
They continued to upheld the creed that socialism was inevitable, and
they sincerely believed that the world had reached a stage in which the
"correlations of forces" were moving towards socialism.
Also, with the establishment of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and
Asia, Soviet foreign policy-planners believed that capitalism had lost
its dominance as an economic system.
The concept of "socialism in one country" was conceived by Stalin in his struggle against Leon Trotsky and his concept of permanent revolution. In 1924, Trotsky published his pamphlet Lessons of October
in which he stated that socialism in the Soviet Union would fail
because of the backward state of economic development unless a world revolution began. Stalin responded to Trotsky's pamphlet with his article, "October and Comrade Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution". In it, Stalin stated, that he did not believe an inevitable conflict between the working class and the peasants would take place, further adding that "socialism in one country is completely possible and probable".
Stalin held the view common amongst most Bolsheviks at the time; there
was possibility of real success for socialism in the Soviet Union
despite the country's backwardness and international isolation. While Grigoriy Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, together with Stalin, opposed Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, they diverged on how socialism could be built. According to Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev supported the resolution of the 14th Conference (held in 1925) which stated that "we cannot complete the building of socialism due to our technological backwardness." Despite the rather cynical attitude, Zinoviev and Kamenev did believe that a defective form of socialism could be constructed.
At the 14th Conference, Stalin reiterated his position, claiming that
socialism in one country was feasible despite the capitalist blockade of
the country. After the conference, Stalin wrote "Concerning the Results of the XIV Conference of the RCP(b)",
in which he stated that the peasantry would not turn against the
socialist system because he believed they had a self-interest in
preserving.
The contradictions which would arise with the peasantry during the
socialist transition, Stalin surmised, could "be overcome by our own
efforts". He concluded that the only viable threat to socialism in the Soviet Union was a military intervention.
In late 1925, Stalin received a letter from a party official
which stated that his position of "Socialism in One Country" was in
contradiction with Friedrich Engels own writings on the subject.
Stalin countered, stating that Engels' writings 'reflected' "the era of
pre-monopoly capitalism, the pre-imperialist era when there were not
yet the conditions of an uneven, abrupt development of the capitalist
countries." From 1925 onwards, Bukharin began writing extensively on the subject, and in 1926, Stalin wrote On Questions of Leninism, which contained his best-known writings on the subject. Trotsky, with the publishing of Leninism,
began countering Bukharin's and Stalin's arguments, claiming that
socialism in one country was possible, but only in the short-run, and
claimed that without a world revolution it would be impossible to safeguard the Soviet Union from the "restoration of bourgeoisie relations".
Zinoviev on the other hand, disagreed with both Trotsky and Bukharin
and Stalin, holding instead steadfast to Lenin's own position from 1917
to 1922, and continued to claim that only a defecting form of socialism
could be constructed in the Soviet Union without a world revolution. Bukharin, by now, began arguing for the creation of an autarkic economic model, while Trotsky, in contrast, claimed that the Soviet Union had to participate in the international division of labour to develop.
In contrast to Trotsky and Bukharin, Stalin did not believe a world
revolution was possible, claiming in 1938 that a world revolution was in
fact impossible, and claiming that Engels was wrong on the matter. At the 18th Congress, Stalin took the theory to its inevitable conclusion, claiming that the communist mode of production could be conceived in one country.
He rationalised this by claiming that the state could exist in a
communist society, as long as the Soviet Union was encircled by
capitalism. However, surprisingly, with the establishment of satellite states in Eastern Europe,
Stalin claimed that socialism in one country was only possible in a
large country like the Soviet Union, and that the other states, in order
to survive, had to follow the Soviet line.
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