Piety and Revision: How Will the Mandarins Survive Under the Rule of Law?

Abstract

I would like to say something today about the rule of the Party, about constitutional reforms and the rule of law, and about the mandarins and the way they have coped. We must recognize stunning accomplishments in the last several years in Soviet public life. Those that go under the heading of glasnost are already fairly familiar to most of you: the Soviet Union's loosening hold on eastern Europe; the repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (never so-called by Brezhnev) that a country once gone socialist must be protected even against its will from going somewhere other than socialist; other confessions of error that were conspicuously lacking in the style of Soviet leadership in the past, like confessions that Stalin had made errors and confessions about the period of stagnation (zastoi); accomplishments within the legal system, some of which have been mentioned, some of which will be enumerated tomorrow, and some of which I shall describe, though very briefly, in a little while.