State administration in the USSR as the realization of sociological ideas of Slavophilism

Abstract

The article is devoted to analyzing some historical aspects of Russian state administration regarded in the context of the study of social and philosophical ideas of Slavophile thinkers of the 19th century. Along with such ideological dominants of the Slavophile doctrine as anti-Westernism, etatism and community, the author of the article marks out the following three key themes in the theoretical heritage of Slavophiles which in transformed kind were realized in the state administrative practice of the USSR: "all-class representation", debureaucratization of the administrative apparatus and the state forming people. It is claimed that in the social-philosophical works of Slavophiles one could find the beginnings of future principles of the Soviet democracy: integration of legislative and executive branches of power, proportional representation in the government of all social communities and groups of the country, maximal adaptation of the administrative apparatus to the needs of society. It is shown in the article that one of the aspects of campaigns against "the servility to foreigners" and "bourgeois cosmopolitanism", which were launched in the USSR after the "cold war" had been unleashed, was the promotion of representatives of Russian and other Slavic nationalities to leading administrative positions. The author comes to the conclusion that at different stages of the soviet state development the appropriate Slavophile ideas which could best suite the tasks of every stage were actualized. Besides it, the ideological origins of the unprecedented in the world history Russian modernization of the 20th century are seen by the author of the article as kind of "resonance" of the values of Bolshevism and Slavophilism.