Fyodor Mikhailovich Burlatsky

Burlatsky carried out the key theoretical work of Khrushchev-era de-Stalinization reforms. Named Fyodor after Friedrich Engels and born into a communist family, he was deeply embedded in the Soviet system. In 1958 he wrote the chapter on the state for the Marxism-Leninism textbook edited by Otto Kuusinen, and in 1960 he was appointed head of the consultant group in the CC CPSU department led by Yuri Andropov, spending nearly two years drafting the 1961 Party Program.

His most important contribution was the thesis on 'the transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat to the all-people's state.' This formulation officially abolished the Stalinist concept of class dictatorship and declared that the Soviet state had entered a stage of representing the entire people: it became the theoretical foundation of Khrushchev's reforms. Alongside this, he inserted provisions on cadre rotation, term limits for top party and state posts, and guarantees against the revival of one-man rule and the cult of personality. That same year he co-authored the 'Moral Code of the Builder of Communism,' codifying the ethical dimension of de-Stalinization.

Burlatsky also contributed to Khrushchev's report to the 22nd Party Congress and co-led the working group preparing a draft of a new Soviet constitution. Later reflecting on this period, he defined himself as 'a reformer, not a revolutionary,' and believed that inciting mass protests was dangerous in a country where democratic traditions had not yet taken root. This cautious reformism remained his lifelong political stance.

Burlatsky's most important theoretical contribution was the 'all-people's state' (общенародное государство) thesis, which he inserted into the 1961 CPSU Program. By declaring the transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat to a state of the whole people, it provided the theoretical basis for formally repudiating the Stalinist doctrine of intensifying class struggle. He also co-authored the state section of the Marxist-Leninist textbook edited by Otto Kuusinen, and systematized the thesis in his 1964 doctoral dissertation, 'The State and Communism.'

His broader academic legacy lies in establishing political science as an independent social-science discipline in the USSR. In the Marxist tradition, political science had long been dismissed as a 'bourgeois pseudo-science,' but Burlatsky, together with Alexander Galkin and others, introduced political sociology, comparative politics, and international-relations analysis into Soviet scholarship. Their 1974 co-authored volume Sociology, Politics, International Relations was a pioneering work in the field. He later chaired the Scientific Council on Political Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His body of work spans political leadership studies from Machiavelli to Mao, the theorization of 'New Thinking,' and the intellectual lineage of Soviet reform from Khrushchev through Gorbachev.