ABSTRACT
Is the USSR a democracy? The question has taxed my mind since student days. I remember being confronted by this question on a Final Honours examination paper in December 1939. I handled the question by outlining the Webbs’ argument in Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation and then demolishing it. I argued that notwithstanding its socialist elements the USSR could not be considered a democracy because it was a one-party system, because of its neglect of individual and minority rights, because of police terror and because of its intolerance towards dissent. This line of argument was not surprising in the aftermath of the purges and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. My opinions at the time were liberal democratic and neither Marxist nor Leninist. They were strongly influenced by university teachers such as W. Macmahon Ball and R.M. Crawford, as well as by the writings of A.D. Lindsay, Harold J. Laski, J. Bryce, I. Jennings, C. De Lisle Burns and L. Basset. And behind all these writers stood John Stuart Mill.
