Mobilized participation and the nature of the Soviet dictatorship

Bibliographic Data

ID23249140
AuthorsWilliam Zimmerman (0000-0001-7123-737X, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, corresponding author)
Year1987
Pages332-353
Publication date1987-10-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenuePolitics, Work, and Daily Life in the USSR (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511664182.012
OpenAlexW1577298676
ISBN9780511664182
LanguageEN
Citations received12

How shall we characterize contemporary regime–society relations in the Soviet Union? In the 1950s Soviet specialists and students of comparative politics more broadly were agreed on the basic outlines of How the Soviet System Works, to use the title of the summary volume of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System (Bauer, Inkeles, and Kluckhohn 1959). The Soviet Union was a novel dictatorial form in which the regime insisted on, and accomplished, the mobilization to its purposes of the entire society. This pattern of regime–society relations differentiated the Soviet totalitarian system and traditional autocracy, which discourages mobilization of elites and masses and is content with citizen acquiescence.

Democracy · Dictatorship · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · European history and politics · Law

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