The heart of the governing ideology of the Soviet Union was an image of itself asa traveller on the road to communism. This image was embedded in the narrative ofclass struggle and class mission created by Karl Marx and first embodied in a masspolitical movement by European Social Democracy. When Russian Social Democratstook power in October 1917, they founded a regime that was unique in its daybecause of their profound sense that the country had embarked on a journey ofradical self-transformation.

Throughout its history, the Soviet Union’s self-definition as a travelleron the road to socialism coloured its political institutions, its economy, itsforeign policy and its culture. The inner history of Soviet ideology is thus thestory of a metaphor – a history of the changing perceptions of the road tocommunism. In 1925, Nikolai Bukharin’s book Road to Socialism exuded the confidence of the first generation of Sovietleaders. Sixty years later, the catch-phrase ‘which path leads to thetemple?’ reflected the doubts and searching of the perestroika era. Right to the end, Soviet society assumed thatthere was a path with a temple at the end of it and that society had the duty totravel down that path.