Harper S. The Government of the Soviet Union

New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1946. — 220 p.In the conditions of the general collapse to which three years of participation in the World War brought it, the former Russian Empire with its Tsarism saw the rise of Bolshevism. Bolshevism became the Russian experience of social revolution, deriving its name from one of the Russian socialist parties which had been organizing and working on a program of revolution for many years. It was the former Bolshevik (majority) faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workman Party that led and assumed the responsibility for the second revolution that came to Russia in that year 1917. This Bolshevik revolution is now called by its followers the “Great Proletarian Revolution” or the “October Revolution” of 1917. The institutions through which the October, 1917, Revolution deployed were Councils or Soviets of Workers*, Soldiers* and Peasants* Deputies, produced by the earlier revolution in February of 1917, and on the model of a closely similar institution of a still earlier 'revolution in Russia in 1905. Thus Sovietism became the institutional expression of Bolshevism j the republics set up by the Revolution were called Soviet republics and in 1923 came together as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, generally designated in abbreviation as the "Soviet Union". The Soviet system, as it came to be called from the name of its governmental organs, was not only the product of revolution y it became the instrument of a continuing revolution. Its authors still insist on the essentially revolutionary character of their régime even after twenty years. At the present writing the Bolsheviks speak of a "turning-point" in the political life of the country and in the politics of the Revolution, which is taking the form of new constitutions and at the same time of the most extensive and ruthless “purge” in the history of the Revolution.The Soviet Union as a Community
The Political Heritage
The Time-Table of the Revolution
Structural Features of the Soviet System
The Determination of Policy
Law-Making
Public Administration
The Public Services
The Public Services (Continued)
The State and the Individual
The Soviet Union in the WorldBibliographical Note