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It is a peculiar paradox that the fall of "really existing socialism" in Europe evoked surprisingly few serious reflections on the historical fate of the communist Utopia. In my view insufficient advantage has been taken of the opportunity to survey the communist phenomenon as a whole, that is, from the perspective of the completed cycle of its history in "the first country of socialism." One may even say that interest in the ideological sources of the communist experiment in Russia has declined significantly. The predominant view explains the Russian Revolution and its tragic consequences in terms of the peculiarities of Russian history, Russian culture, and even the Russian mentality.1 An emphasis on the role played by the universal (and Western in origin) ideology of Marxist communism is very often regarded either simply as naivety or as a relic of the early period of the Cold War.

Aleksandr Tsipko is a doctor of philosophical sciences and deputy director of the Institute of Economic and Political Research of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He is a specialist in the history of Socialist thought and the author of numerous works on the theory of socialism. His four-part article “The Sources of Stalinism” in Nauka i zhizn’ (1988, Nos. 11 and 12, 1989, and Nos. 1 and 2) gained Tsipko instant notoriety for its searing critique of Marxism as the source of the Soviet Union’s current problems. The following interview was conducted on July 23, 1990, at the IV. World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies at Harrogate, England.