The New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism

Bibliographic Data

ID19945526
AuthorsAdam B Ulam (corresponding author)
Year1963
Publication date1963-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherHarvard University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.4159/harvard.9780674864320
OpenAlexW2155934304
Open LibraryOL27562407M
ISBN9780674864320
LanguageEN
Citations received7

N OTHING pricks one's curiosity more than the inner operations of a power system. And in the case of Russia the incentive to speculate what really goes on in the councils of the Kremlin is enhanced by the supersecrecy in which the highest level of Soviet politics is enveloped, by the dramatic shifts of policy and sudden displacements of leading personalities, and by a natural apprehension about the operations of a totalitarian regime which may at any moment threaten or transform our daily lives. In the United States, the mechanics of power in the Soviet Union have become a matter of national interest. A television show not long ago undertook to recreate the events leading to Stalin's death. The public is frequently invited by the press to ponder the significance of the replacement of a security chief in Kazakhstan or a Party secretary in Georgia. Newspaper stereotypes of leading Soviet figures appear almost as often as those of American presidential possibilities. Who has not heard of ebullient Nikita Khrushchev? And we have been presented with his potential rival: the dour ideologue Mikhail Suslov. As if in ironic expiation of the national sin of isolationism, the American people are concerning themselves increasingly with the fortunes of the Kirichenkos, Molotovs, and Zhukovs, and the activities and motivations of those distant political figures weigh heavily upon the national consciousness. And yet how tenuous the basis upon which we erect our hypotheses and conjectures about Soviet politics! Unlike the performers in some other television shows, actors in the drama dealing with Stalin's death could have no assurance that their lines adhered to historical truth. That Suslov is a potential rival of Khrushchev or that Malenkov and Molotov were removed because of their attachment to Stalin's policies and methods are conjectures based, respectively, upon an unverifiable assumption and upon a charge which they have been in no position to answer. We have no right to scoff at these conjectures, but we must look for more solid bits of evidence before we try to construct a realistic picture of politics in the Soviet Union

Face (sociological concept) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Russia and Soviet political economy · Soviet and Russian History · Communism · politics and government · Soviet Union