378 Chapter Te n
Khrushchev’s notorious secret denunciation of Stalin in 1956 un
leashed previously pent-up criticism among members of the manage
rial elites. Methods of Soviet planning came under scrutiny, for exam
ple, and debates as to how to assure a more efficient use of resources
attained quite unaccustomed candor. Experiments in administrative
reform were tried in the mid-1960s; but when the debates became too
revelatory of internal difficulties and differences of opinion, public
discussion was shut down again.^17 Thereafter, as previously in Soviet
(as also in prerevolutionary Russian) history, police pressure inhibited
free expression of dissent.
Yet the personal courage needed to defy official repression gave
unusual weight to the voices of those who continued to dare.
Throughout the postwar era, dissidence within the Communist world
proliferated, beginning as early as 1946, when Yugoslavia split away
from the rest of the Communist world. Other nations subsequently
did the same, most notably the Chinese in 1961. Such splits reflected
national feeling and diversity. So did some expressions of dissent from
within the Soviet Union, especially among Jews and Moslems. But in
addition, a few distinguished scientists and men of letters attacked
repression of truth and personal freedom within the USSR. Such
individuals were able to circulate their views through secret channels,
within and also outside of the Soviet Union.
This proved, if proof were needed, that the few individuals who
dared to defy party authorities were supported by many others who
sympathized with the dissidents sufficiently to pass their writings from
hand to hand and through secret channels to persons living beyond the
reach of the Soviet police. A second sign of disillusionment with
official ideology was the vogue for pop music and other imports from
the youth culture of the West. A real if tenuous counterculture thus
emerged in the Soviet Union which offended the pieties and pro
prieties of the Russian establishment even more radically than the
parallel youthful rebelliousness grated upon capitalist-corporate values
in the United States.
Strains on consensus within state boundaries, however, merely
tended to make the police and armed forces more important. Except
for France and Britain, none of the major industrialized countries had
to call on its armed forces to put down domestic disorder during the
postwar decades. In poorer countries, however, intenser dissension
brought the military to the fore, time and again. In any modern state,
- Moshe Lewin, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates from Bukharin to
the Modern Reformers (Princeton, 1974), pp. 127 ff. offers an intriguing overview.
