Akexander Zinoviev was I suppose a ‘good’ Party memberwhile he remained in the Soviet Union. Of course there were times when he slipped up - when he didn’t play the game cleverly enough. His dissertation on logic was finally accepted after ‘major’ qualifications. It wasn’t that his arguments were confused. No. Zinoviev forgot to mention the little things like ‘according to Marx’ and ‘Engels said’ and ‘in Lenin’s writings…’ And we know that these are important labels and requirements for academic success. As Zinoviev remarks on this absurd procedure:

‘I know that the majority of Soviet people don’t believe in Marxism, but they simply accept it. My sentence about what Marx said is important because it is a sign of acceptance. It is true that many dissidents don’t believe in Marxism and because of that the social practice is