ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the works of sovietologists who have dwelt at greater length upon the nature of the Soviet working class: either in specific contexts such as the workplace or perestroika, or in a relatively broader relationship to the nature of the system. The theorists of “totalitarianism” assume that the absence of “independent” workers’ organisations meant that the workers were unable to struggle as a class; and the “revisionist” students of “interest groups” either concentrate on divisions within the elite or else explain social tensions more broadly but on what is still a political basis. The chapter deals with the considerations of class struggle in the USSR offered by a selection of commentators adopting “sovietological” approaches. It shows how arange of sovietological works have fallen short of relating a view of class struggle to a theory of the political economy.
