Utopia in Power: History of the U.S.S.R. from 1917 to the Present

Description

George Orwell, perhaps the only Western writer who profoundly understood the essence of the Soviet world, devised this precise and pitiless formula: "Whoever controls the past controls the future." Orwell was not the first to say this, though. Mikhail Pokrovsky, the first Soviet Marxist historian, anticipated Orwell when he wrote that history is politics applied to the past. The history of the Soviet Union is not just another example confirming the general rule. In this case history was placed at the service of the state to the greatest possible extent and in the most conscious, systematic way.After the October revolution not only the means of production were nationalized but all spheres of existence, and above all, memory, history.One particular characteristic—the total influence of the ruling party on all spheres of existence on a scale never before known—acts as a determining force in all Soviet institutions and on the typical Soviet citizen, Homo Sovieticus. This total influence has distorted the normal processes at work in contemporary societies and has resulted in the emergence of a historically unprecedented society and state.