ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book attempts to provide more tenable answers to the problem of the interaction between Communist ideology and certain Soviet political practices. The record of the relationship between doctrine and practice in the Soviet Union provides an opportunity to test prevailing general theories concerning the role of ideas in organized human behavior. The book addresses the following questions. Firstly, which of the prerevolutionary Bolshevik ideas have been put into effect in the Soviet Union, which ones set aside, and why? Secondly, what can we learn from this historical experience about the role of ideas in general? One may concludes that one type of social system imposes more frustrations on the gratification of human desires than another, though there are many difficulties of a technical nature that have to be overcome before such a conclusion can gain even a strong semblance of probability.
