The Legitimation of Social Inequality in Soviet Ideology During the Stalin Era

Abstract

Juan Miguel Valdera Gil – Ph.D. in Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Granada, Rector
López Argüeta Street. 18.071- Granada. Spain. E-mail: valgil@ugr.es

This paper analyses the aspects of Soviet ideology related to social inequality during the Stalin era. It shows how this ideology legitimised social inequality, which emerged in the USSR following the social transformations in the 1930s: collectivization, accelerated industrialization, the adoption of a centrally planned economy and attempts to regulate the social structure.
In carrying out this analysis the author applies the analytical method designed by Spanish sociologist Fernando Conde.
Тhe analysis is grounded in an in-depth study of four entries related to social inequality from the 1955 edition of the famous Philosophical Dictionary by Rozental and Yudin. This dictionary was first published in 1939 with five further editions in 1940, 1951, 1952, 1954, and 1955; in 1963 a new abridged version was published to comply with the new philosophy of the ruling Communist party. This dictionary can be regarded as the quintessence of Soviet ideology and the official viewpoint on various social phenomena. The entries selected for the analysis are: «class-in-itself and class-for- itself», «class struggle», «social classes», «social classes in the USSR».
A qualitative analysis of these four entries reveals that the official Soviet ideology justified the existing social inequality (if only as a temporary phenomenon) by describing it as a necessary step towards the absolute elimination of inequality in the communist future. It was necessary to maintain the growth of production needed to accumulate sufficient economic power for the transition to communism. In other words, the production of material goods and their uneven distribution was used to encourage the development of labour.