ABSTRACT
The underestimation of the importance of civil society in the former USSR is thus simply the reverse side of the overestimation of the "totalitarian model." The Soviet Union was no different from Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, South Korea, or any other country that has made the transition from an agricultural to an urban-industrial society in the past couple of generations. In institutional terms, it was believed that the Soviet Communist Party maintained itself through the "circular flow of power." The totalitarian model was an "ideal type," and like all ideal types, it never fully described Soviet reality. The importance of this "proto-civil society" is evident from subsequent events. The imperatives of industrial maturity eventually forced a breakdown of the political system because truly modern technological societies cannot flourish except in an atmosphere permitting a certain degree of freedom. Everyone admits the Cold War is over, it is time for Sovietology to come out of its conceptual ghetto.
