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The Bolshevik Revolution Turns 70

By Wolfgang Leonhard
Winter 1987/88
Article Summary and Author Biography

Recounts the history of ideology in the USSR since 1918, claiming that "seventy years after the Bolshevik revolution, ideology in the USSR has reached its nadir". Marxism-Leninism has failed to describe either national or international reality. "The Soviet regime has lost its ideological legitimacy". Outlines three ideological alternatives for the future (1) success of Gorbachev's policies (2) Russian nationalism (3) neo-Stalinism.

Wolfgang Leonhard was educated in the Soviet Union (1935-45), is Adjunct Professor of History at Yale University, and is the author, most recently, of The Kremlin and the West: A Realistic Approach (1986). Copyright © 1987 by Wolfgang Leonhard.

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