There has been general agreement that the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism plays a central role in Soviet politics. To at least some Western scholars, the importance of the official ideology is such that we are justified in regarding the Soviet political system as an "ideology" or even "utopia in power", with the official ideology functioning as a kind of blueprint which determines, or at least prescribes, the course of that society's development.¹ To the Soviet authorities themselves, there is equally no doubt that (in the words of the current Constitution) the October Revolution has given rise to a "new type of state", a "basic instrument for defending the gains of the revolution and for building socialism and communism", which in turn is part of a world-wide transition from capitalism to socialism.² Yet, at least in Western scholarly circles, the nature of the ideology itself has tended to be taken as a "given" in discussions of this kind.