To what extent was the Soviet Union a totalitarian state by 1939?
The term 'totalitarianism' emerged in the 1920s and '30s, to describe the dictatorial regimes which appeared at that time in Germany and the USSR. The Soviet Union was undoubtedly totalitarian by the late 1930s. However, Stalin's power was anything but absolute up until that time. It took the Great Terror, the cult of personality and two decades of political patronage to put him in a position where he could abandon the pretences of law and rule like a tsarist despot.
According to the political scientist and historian Carl Friedrich, a totalitarian regime is distinguished by the following characteristics: a powerful ideology, which promised the onset of a golden era; a single mass-based party, led by a charismatic dictator; a system of terror, built around a ruthless secret police force; and the centralised control of the key institutions in society (the economy, the police, the armed forces and the media).
Clearly, the Soviet Union shared all of these characteristics by the late 1930s.
As far as ideology is concerned, Marxism-Leninism offered a powerful and appealing vision for the nation: a society that was devoid of exploitation, and where all its citizens were equal. Karl Marx had predicted that under communism there would be no poverty, no crime, no money and no government (all four being products of earlier modes of production). Hence, the situation would become “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This could occur because output would be so abundant that inequality would become meaningless.
Of course, the reality in Stalin’s Russia in no way mirrored Marx’s vision, but this was rationalised on the grounds that state control was necessary until capitalism had been vanquished elsewhere in the world. Marxism also offered a deterministic interpretation of history, in which all societies were moving towards the one end: socialism. Hence, dissidents (those who opposed the Stalinist vision) could be swept away on the grounds that they were standing in the way of history.
Politically, the Soviet system had many characteristics of totalitarianism even before Stalin had consolidated his rule. Russia had become a one party state within a year of the Bolsheviks seizing power, and that party soon grew to have millions of members. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Cheka had been given the power to deal with enemies of the Revolution without the inconvenience of a trial. No one knows how many people were put to death in this way between 1918 and 1924, but it was at least 70,000 and possibly as many as a quarter of a million.
Even so, the Communist Party itself retained many democratic elements throughout the 1920s. Stalin needed the support of his colleagues to attain pre-eminence within the Politburo, and this dependence continued until the 1930s. Even as late as 1933, he was unable to persuade his colleagues that dissidents within the party should be put to death. Only two members of the Politburo (Molotov and Kaganovich) were willing to back him on this. Two others (Voroshilov and Kalinin) were reluctant to agree, while the rest (Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Kossior, Kuibyshev and Rudzutak) were totally opposed.
To obtain absolute power, Stalin needed to circumvent the traditional avenues of authority, and resort directly to terror. Kirov's assassination gave him his chance. In 1936, he unleashed a series of show trials, to discredit and eliminate his enemies within the Central Committee.
In the first of these trials, in 1936, Stalin eliminated the so-called ‘Oppositionists’ – those Old Bolsheviks who had tried to block his rise to power in the 1920s (men like Kamenev and Zinoviev). The second set of trials, in 1937, was aimed at Stalin’s own allies – those who had opposed him on issues such as collectivisation and the execution of party dissidents. Finally, in 1938, he eliminated the remaining members of Lenin’s inner circle (men like Bukharin and Rykov). This was accompanied by a full-scale assault on every institution in the Soviet Union: the party, the army, the bureaucracy, the cultural organisations, the industrial enterprises, even the secret police. In all, 18 million people died during these purges.
With his enemies dead, deported or terrorised into silence, Stalin now assumed the powers of a despot. As Alan Bullock has written, "Stalin felt strong enough to order the arrest of any of his colleagues without consultation or appeal to the Central Committee or anyone else – the classic definition of the tyrant's power."
However, fear was not the only factor underpinning Stalin's rule. Soviet totalitarianism was also characterised by the state's monopoly over economy, the mass media and the armed forces.
As far as the economy was concerned, Stalin replaced NEP with a system of command socialism. Under this system, the state owned virtually all productive assets and ran the economy via central planning. Agricultural land was collectivised, and a series of Five Year Plans was introduced to facilitate industrialisation.
Another area where the state enjoyed a monopoly was the media. There were over 10,000 newspapers in the country, and all were government owned or controlled. The regime also controlled the nation's cinemas and film production houses. All news was expected to follow the party line. In addition, all writers and painters were expected to devote their talents to the promotion of the socialist ideal. They were also required to pay homage to Stalin himself – the ‘Supreme Genius of Humanity’ and true successor to Lenin. By the late 1930s, his face appeared everywhere – in photographs and paintings, on the sides of houses and buildings. Cities and towns were named in his honour. Children were taught to give thanks to him for their happy lives.
Stalin also arranged for history to be rewritten, to emphasise his own role the Revolution and the Civil War. According to this version, it was he who organised the Bolshevik takeover in 1917, he who devised the strategy to defeat the White armies during the Civil War.
Finally, Stalin imposed his control over the Red Army by purging 90 percent of its officers and by replacing them with men who owed their loyalty to him personally.
Of course, no dictator can exercise total control over society, and this was certainly true in Stalin’s case. As the historian Robert Service has shown, the Soviet regime “might have been totalitarian in its goals and intentions”, but it still had difficulty enforcing compliance upon the people. Unable to oppose the state in overt ways, they did so “through slack work habits, pilfering, or deliberate falsification of information and records.” There was also considerable incompetence in the Party hierarchy. Hence, “administrative informality and disarray – and even gross disorder – as well as hyper-orderliness were basic features of life in the USSR throughout its existence.”
Hence, by 1939 the Soviet regime exhibited all the features of totalitarianism. Stalin’s power was maintained by a combination of fear, propaganda and state control of the key institutions of society. It was also maintained by the faith millions of ordinary Russians had in their leader, and in the vision he offered to the people.