ABSTRACT
A number of scholars have sought to verify the hypothesis of decline in advanced industrial societies. The most remarkable phenomenon in connection with the hypothesis of ideological decline, however, is not its empirical relevance for European or Japanese politics but its application even to such a country as the USSR. The erosion of ideology in the Soviet Union is a theme identified also by Daniel Bell, who perceives the overall direction of changes in that country as "the breakup, on all levels, of a monolithic society." Marxism-Leninism has been on the defensive in the Soviet Union, and for the following reasons: its antiscientific character in an age of science; its inadequate economic and social theories; its incompatibility with contemporary conditions, as manifested in the wide-ranging modification of doctrine after Stalin's death; and the gradual disillusionment of Soviet intellectuals with utopian formulations.
