The Contribution of Victor Zaslavsky to the Study of Soviet-type Societies

Abstract

The author assesses the contribution of Victor Zaslavsky to the study of soviettype societies. Zaslavsky’s contribution is also positioned in the intelectual context of sovietology in the 1970’s. The author claims that Zaslavsky’s intimate knowledge of the Soviet system had enabled him to go beyond the limitations of the totalitarian, modernisation and interest-group based approaches to the study of Soviet politics. The crux of Zaslavsky’s original contribution is his development of new concepts which he applied to the study of Brezhnyev’s “real socialism”, such as neostalinist state, state dependent workers, closed enterprises, internal passport system. With the help of these concepts Zaslavsky was more successful in throwing light on the characteristcs of the mature soviet type societies than the proponents of other approaches.