ABSTRACT
Soviet expansionism remained somewhat tarnished under the inwardly murderous and outwardly cautious first decade and a half of Stalin’s rule. The Soviet Army continued to suffer difficulties during Stalin’s last years. Its best generals were either politely exiled or used for political purposes. The advocates of a military society can argue in one of two ways. One is to state that the military in fact occupies the dominant positions in the Soviet hierarchy, and that the Soviet Union is a military society in precisely that sense. Soviet society, precisely in the period covered by Cornelius Castoriadis’s analysis, is dominated by the Pharisaical phrase of “love of peace,” the flagellation of “warmongers” and “militarists.” A further consideration of the Soviet leadership that recommends a primarily European expansion is democratic-political in nature, what we would call its’ “China syndrome.”
