ABSTRACT
Politics, narrowly defined, is a contest over the distribution of political power. However, in the Soviet context such a definition is barely applicable since policy arose out of the total political and cultural context of the polity, not only of the present but burdened by the past and coloured by a vision of the future (we shall examine the role of ideology in the next chapter). The policy process in the USSR was clouded by the divergence between constitutional provisions and informal practices, changing over time and over the type of issue involved. Policy-making can be analysed in various ways. The focus can be on the policy process at the local level, or on a specific field, such as foreign policy, which has received a generous share of attention. The focus can be on the institutions involved, on the process of policy initiation, policy resolution or on the way that policy is implemented, which often subtly changes the policy itself. In the absence of convincing methodological approaches the emphasis has tended to focus on specific case studies. Our focus in this part will be on the role of leadership, various models of the Soviet polity, the role of ideology, and the general issues of legitimacy, political culture and the nature of power, the class and social nature of the system and the emergence of resistance in the form of dissent.
