ABSTRACT
Since well before the October Revolution, Bolshevik party leaders have had a peculiar love-hate relationship with the advanced capitalist world. On the one hand, they were committed to its overthrow and replacement by socialism on a world scale. On the other hand, the West represented the standard of technical and economic achievement to which the Soviet Union and its later acolytes aspired. Indeed, according to the vulgarised interpretation of Marxism employed by Lenin’s successors, the Soviet Union and its socialist partners would cross the threshhold of communism only when they had ‘overtaken and surpassed’ the leading capitalist powers in the per capita production of certain key itemssteel, for example. For a while, during the 1950s and 1960s, it seemed as if this goal was within reach; in fact, Soviet production of certain products did surpass that of the USA-but well after these items, such as steel, basic farm machinery and simple machine tools, had ceased being the determinants and symbols of technological modernity in the era of ‘scientific and technological revolution’. Although the quality of Soviet products remained well below contemporary world standards, impressive quantitative advances continued to be registered.
