ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the framework of developed socialism and provides an outline of the main themes that animated the Party’s ideological agenda during the last two Soviet decades. In describing the political and theoretical agenda that the Party elaborated under the framework of developed socialism, the chapter discusses how the Party pursued a form of economic and social control specific to the context of a technologically advanced and urbanised society. Unlike Khrushchev, who had been exceedingly concerned with the material conditions of everyday life, Party leadership under developed socialism attempted to guide moral behaviour by prescribing a unique form of socialist morality. This prescription was encapsulated in the concept of the socialist ‘way of life’, which subscribed to a set of purportedly eternal Russian values. The moral and psychological norms extolled by the official ideology of developed socialism emphasised the role of the individual and the interdependence between the individual and the collective in defining socialist society. In describing the defining features of developed socialism, this chapter contextualises the intellectual discourses discussed throughout the subsequent chapters, which operated in the shadow of the ideological and political field defined by developed socialism.
