First published in 1958, Russian Political Institutions is intended primarily to meet the need of university students for a good account of the political institutions of the Soviet Union in terms similar to those used in their study of other countries. Though the unique comprehensiveness of the Soviet state’s concerns, to which the book draws attention, precludes a formally comparative approach, the ways in which its business is done can be explained, as elsewhere, by the country’s circumstances and historical experience.
The first chapter indicates something of these circumstances and experience and of the motives of the Soviet state. The second explains the way the distinctive institutional form of the Soviet state came into being and the process by which it assumed some of the conventional state machinery. The third examines this conventional state and its unconventional functions in a Russian Communist setting. The fourth concerns the structure and operation of the complex device called the Party. The fifth, in turn, examines the means evolved for the fulfillment of the state’s main task, the management of the fully nationalized economy as a single concern, and the other main systems of control, including the judicial system. The sixth chapter suggests briefly how priorities of tasks are decided upon, obligations determined, and their performance secured. This is a must read for students and scholars of Russian history and Soviet politics.