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In such countries as East Germany and Hungary, Communist regimes are maintained only by the presence of Russian soldiers or the vigilance of local troops and state police. Many new or underdeveloped nations feel that, whatever lures it may possess, Communism comes with too high a price tag of coercion and terror.
Like a giant moth attempting to break out of a cocoon, Soviet Communism is trying to rid itself of a doctrine conceived a century ago in a far different world. Though Lenin had to revise Marx to fit the Russian pattern, it was Nikita Khrushchev who launched the official decline of the doctrine. Faced with the necessity of solving countless economic and social problems, today's Soviet planners find such Marxist theories as class revolution and "the dictatorship of the proletariat" just plain nuisances. The Chinese are right, of course: the Russians are revisionists. In a very real sense, Russia has survived Marxism more than it has been formed by it. "The revolution is over," says Glasgow University Sovietologist Alec Nove. "Its rationalities, its logic, have little further relevance so far as economic organization is concerned."
Communism & the Russian Character
A half century of constant exposure to propaganda and an enforced ignorance of the rest of the world have had their effect on Russia's citizens, but the Communists have succeeded neither in expunging nor in radically shifting their deep human character traits. The Communist regime has obviously convinced most Russians of the virtues of social ism and persuaded them to take a class-conscious view of history. By its achievement, it seems to have given them more self-esteem and pride in their country than the mass of Russians have ever had before. Gone is the obsequious muzhik whose manners were formed by centuries of serfdom. No longer pervasive is the type that Lenin belittled as "the exhausted, hysterical, misery-mongering intellectual who, publicly beating his breast, cries: 'I am bad, I am vile.' "
The Russian's outlook has perhaps been altered more by industrialization and urbanization than by any methodical attempt to reshape his consciousness. Nonetheless, he is basically what he has been for centuries. He retains much of his shirokaya dusha, or boundless generosity, his emotionalism, his stolid endurance, his hatred and distrust of authority and, at the same time, his deep need for it. Despite widespread atheism and official disapproval, religion is proving increasingly difficult to root out. The Baptists, who appeal to the Russian soul with their fundamentalism, are growing steadily, now have more than 3,000,000 members. Even if its inhabitants rarely attend a religious service, practically every Russian village still celebrates the name day of the local church's patron saint.