| Ideological change is difficult to trace. Using published sources, Politburo, Agitprop, and peace movement archives this dissertation analyzes the impact of late-Stalinist peace rhetoric to explain the frequent assertion that Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence doctrine had antecedents in the Stalin years. Beginning in 1946, the Soviet regime's use of popular and malleable peace rhetoric reflected elite disputes regarding the deployment of domestic resources. "Statists," convinced that emphasizing political loyalty or instigating revolution abroad would hurt vital reconstruction efforts, opposed "revivalist" efforts to enforce domestic ideological discipline and foreign socialist expansion. Both groups employed peace themes to promote their visions. But peace rhetoric unexpectedly would promote change in fundamental Marxist-Leninist assumptions about what constituted a successful society and state.;From 1946, international tensions worsened as militant revivalist rhetoric dedicated to spreading socialism threatened exploitation of the sympathy and authority Soviets had gained fighting Germany. In 1948 statists replaced the revivalist peace with overtures to capitalist governments and peoples through an institutionalized peace movement allegedly independent of ideological or Party-influenced criteria. They hoped to represent the USSR as a moderate, responsive state leading a universal campaign for peace and thereby forestall antagonizing the non-Communist world to unite against the Soviets. Ideologically, working-class goals were first equated with and then made dependent on the achievement of peace. These altered theoretical imperatives allowed Malenkov's 1953 denunciation of war as devastating to civilization, which anticipated Khrushchev's doctrine of non-violent socialist transitions and the policy of peaceful coexistence.;Domestically, peace propaganda undermined the precepts of Bolshevism through approbation of democratic public influence on state policies abroad favoring peace. Praising such action implied that perhaps all Soviet citizens should also become fully respected members of the state polity and furthered statist attempts to contract Party political supervision. Ultimately, Khrushchev would insist that the Party derive legitimacy from the people and state, not theory or history. Without revolutionary significance, the Party could retain authority only by working for the state's economic success. Khrushchev's subsequent redefinition of Party revivalism as dedication to economic management rather than enforcement of political loyalty embodied the statist preference for pragmatically, not ideologically, coherent policies. |
