ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some aspects of the regime’s reliance on the Soviet population—specifically, the pressures on and ability of the regime and the economy it manages to provide: the prospect, in career terms, of a good or at least tolerable life at work for the majority of its citizens, beyond everyday bread-and-butter concerns. The Soviet Union, for all the tremendous human cost recorded in its almost sixty-year history, is by any measure a politically stable entity. Its stability is rooted in history and based on elements of political legitimacy and practical effectiveness. Soviet legitimacy is based on the positive grounds of effectiveness as well. In a more general sense, secularization has come to the Soviet polity, however poorly official rhetoric may reflect this reality. The status of trade-union consciousness becomes more ambiguous when it exists within the context of a successful revolutionary regime, presumably able to provide the appropriate and correct ideological guidance.
