GABOR TAMAS RITTERSPORN powerfol constant obstacles to the realisation of any strategy of institutional and technical development. As all these strategies have to be carried out by the middle layers who discharge intermediary fonctions between the ruling class and the non-managerial and non-specialist masses, it is inevitable that all the manifestations of resistance by these latter should arouse antagonism between these two strata. And as even the most radically « dissident » aspirations of the middle layers only envisage the transformation of their intermediary fonctions into directive fonctions, it is inevitable that this antagonism should be irreconcilable and that the fonctional integration of the intermediary layers with the State apparatus, which facilitates their manipulation by the ruling class, should unify and organise them as a class vis-à-vis the masses. Neither the middle class's often unconscius defence of its social distinctness, its authority and its real or virtual privileges, nor the masses' instinctive and unorganised challenge to all authority, distinctness and privilege is therefore capable of making these social strata creators of counter-institutions and counter-techniques likely to change the social and political system of the USSR. And so long as the policy of the ruling class makes any institutional or technical development increasingly problematical, in the absence of the social agents of fondamental changes, the historical period characterized by the appearance of the dissident movement seems to be a long period of crisis and stagnation rather than an era of dramatic changes. 42
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