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USSR: Pluralist Monolith?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Alexander J. Groth
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Extract

Since the 1960s, when the concept of totalitarianism began to be critically assailed, Western, and particularly academic, interpreters of the Soviet Union have increasingly moved in the direction of a new convergence. Many scholars have portrayed the political systems of the Soviet Union and of Western countries as increasingly alike, viewing them through the common perspective of ‘pluralism’. Basically, it has been said, conflict and differences of opinion are characteristic of all these political systems. To be sure, the conflicts and differences may be expressed through rather different institutions, and with somewhat different styles or nuances in each case, but they are there just the same.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1979 , pp. 445 - 464
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Perhaps its most famous exposition can be found in Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956).Google Scholar This work emphasized six allegedly unique, sui generis, characteristics of ‘totalitarianism’: (1) an official ideology with a messianic orientation; (2) a single mass party espousing the ideology, ‘led officially by one man, “the dictator”’; (3) terroristic police controls; (4) a near-monopoly of effective mass communications; (5) a near-monopoly of military weapons; (6) central control and direction of the entire economy.

2 Hough, Jerry F., The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Lodge, Milton, ‘Soviet Elite Participatory Attitudes in the Post-Stalin Period’, American Political Science Review, LXII (1968), 827–939CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwartz, Joel J. and Keech, William R., ‘Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union’, American Political Science Review, LXII (1968), 840–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For other sources relevant to the role of groups in Soviet politics – representing a variety of approaches – see Kanet, Roger, ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies (New York: Free Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Croups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Kelley, Donald R., ‘Toward a Model of Soviet Decision-Making: A Research Note’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 701–6, esp. p. 702CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also his ‘Interest Groups in the USSR: The Impact of Political Sensitivity on Group Influence’, Journal of Politics, XXXIV (1972), 860–88.Google Scholar

3 Hough, , The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, p. 23.Google Scholar

4 Hough, , The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Lindblom, Charles E., Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 188Google Scholar: ‘some of the most fundamental and pervasive features of industrial society are what they are because of the privileged position of business in government and polities’. Also, ‘Whoare the main leaders in polyarchial polities? Businessmen are influential in enormous disproportion’ (p. 200). See also such works as Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Lundberg, Ferdinand, The Rich and the Super-Rich (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968)Google Scholar; Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State, 2nd edn. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1971)Google Scholar; Kolko, Gabriel, Wealth and Power in America (New York: Praeger, 1962)Google Scholar; Domhoff, G. William, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967)Google Scholar; McConnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), among many others.Google Scholar

6 Among many examples of a ‘total power’ definition, see de Galindez, Jesus, The Era of Trujillo: Dominican Dictator (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1973).Google Scholar Writing about the Dominican Republic in the years 1931–55, Galindez asked: ‘Is this a true dictatorship?… If by dictatorship we understand a political regime of force, in which the citizens have no power to express their will and the ruler alone makes decisions [sic] then there is a dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. But history has seen several kinds of regimes fulfilling these broad characteristics. Such were the absolute monarchies of the past, such have been the modern totalitarian states…’ (p. 160). See also Burch, Betty, ed., Dictatorship and Totalitarianism (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1954), Preface, p. 4.Google Scholar Compare the much earlier pre-Second World War perspective of the British scholar, Alfred Cobban, Dictatorship: Its History and Theory (New York: Scribner, 1939), p. 26Google Scholar: [The Dictator] ‘must possess absolute sovereignty, that is, all political power must ultimately emanate from his will, and it must be unlimited in scope. It must be exercised, more or less frequently, in an arbitrary manner, by decree rather than law. And, finally, it must not be limited in duration to any given term of office; nor must the dictator be responsible to any other authority, for such restrictions would be incompatible with absolute rule.’

7 Writing about the 1930s George Orwell once suggested that if people believed ‘fascism’ impossible to define then perhaps they would not think it worth resisting either. See Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian, eds., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. IV (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), p. 139.Google Scholar This may apply to dictatorships as well.

8 See, for example, Milbrath, Lester W. and Goel, M. L., Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics, 2nd edn., (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1977)Google Scholar, and Bereisen, Bernard and Steiner, Gary A., Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964).Google Scholar

9 Schweitzer, Arthur, Big Business in the Third Reich (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 507.Google Scholar

10 Schweitzer, , Big Business in the Third Reich, p. 660, note 28.Google Scholar

11 Schweitzer, , Big Business in the Third Reich, pp. 538–9.Google Scholar

12 Yahil, Leni, The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969), pp. 127–8.Google Scholar

13 Yahil, , The Rescue of Danish Jewry, pp. 267 and 172.Google Scholar

14 See Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 766–7.Google Scholar

15 Shirer, , The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 831.Google Scholar

16 See Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 536–42Google Scholar, for an account of the systematic frustration of Hitler's 19 March 1945 decree by Speer's artful and evasive ‘implementation’. Says Speer: ‘I was aware that if Hitler knew what I was doing, he would have seen it as high treason. I had to assume that this time I would have to pay the full penalty’ (p. 542).Google Scholar Of course, in late March 1945, Hitler's authority in Germany was becoming somewhat precarious. ‘Even Ohlendorf, the chief of the SD (Security Service) told me in prison that he had been regularly informed of my actions but had allowed reports to stop at his desk’ (p. 542).Google Scholar

17 See Bialer, Seweryn, ed., Stalin and His Generals: Soviet Military Memoirs of World War II (New York: Pegasus, 1969), pp. 378–80.Google Scholar

18 Salisbury, Harrison E., The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 401.Google Scholar

19 Some authors, for example, Clinton Rossiter, have used the term ‘dictatorship’ to denote constitutional, emergency rule as in the days of the ancient Roman republic. See his Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), p. 294.Google Scholar Compare also the definitions of Hallgarten, George W. F., Why Dictators? The Causes and Forms of Tyrannical Rule (New York: Macmillan, 1954)Google Scholar, and de Battaglia, Otto Forst, ‘The Nature of Dictatorship’, in Dictatorship on Trial (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), p. 361.Google Scholar

20 See Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 369Google Scholar, on how ‘the Central Committee approved’ the arrest of V. N. Merkulov, Minister of State Control at the time of Beria's downfall, and how ‘we’ (presumably the anti-Beria faction of the CPSU Presidium of the Central Committee) ‘sacked’ the incumbent State Prosecutor in favour of one (R. A. Rudenko) who could deal with the investigation more ‘objectively’ (pp. 368–9). It should be noted that Beria's ‘trial’ was not even announced prior to the official statement that he had been executed. See also Townsend, James R., Politics in China (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974)Google Scholar on the purges of Mao's one-time second in command, Marshal Lin Piao, and Politburo member Ch'en Po-ta, both suggestive of political murders (pp. 283–5). The former was said by Mao Tse Tung to have died in an airplane crash ‘trying to escape’, roughly one year after the fact, i.e. in July 1972. Ch'en Po-ta disappeared from public view in August 1970 and was said to have been linked with Lin Piao in 1972. Several other Politburo members vanished along with Ch'en and Lin Piao.

The murder of Fegelein occurred on or about 28 April 1945 at the Berlin headquarters, at Hitler's order, and without the benefit of a trial. It was one of a number of demonstrations of Hitler's extraordinary power as the ‘chief justiciar’ of the Nazi Reich. See Roper, H. R. Trevor, The Last Days of Hitler (New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 161–71 and 247–8.Google Scholar

21 Among various accounts consider, for example, Bullock, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper, 1952), pp. 279–81.Google Scholar The SA executions were sufficiently widespread and bold to stir public attention although Dr Goebbels actually ‘forbade German newspapers to carry obituary notices of those who had been executed or ‘had committed suicide’ (p. 268). The documentary evidence relating to Hitler's gang-land justice is said to have been burned on Goering's orders (p. 277). Nevertheless, Hitler discussed the purge in a Reichstag speech on 13 July 1934.

In the case of the Soviet Union, the deportation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on 13 February 1974 is a more recent example of a judicial-dictatorial intervention. A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet stripping Solzhenitsyn of his citizenship and sending him into exile was published only after he had been seized and put on a plane bound for Zurich. Not a single letter of protest against this action was subsequently published in the legitimate Soviet media.

22 As conceptualized in Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. and Huntington, Samuel P., Political Power: US/USSR (New York: Viking Press, 1963), pp. 202–4.Google Scholar ‘Bubble-up’ was associated with the pluralistic U.S. regime, and ‘trickle-down’ with the closed Soviet model.

23 See Truman, David B., The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2nd edn. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), pp. 357–61.Google Scholar See also Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, pp. 194–7Google Scholar, on the disparity between election funds collected by business interests in the United States and Britain and the much smaller collections of other societal interests. Says Lindblom: ‘To compare political contributions from the personal incomes of ordinary citizens and allocations from business receipts is to compare mouse and mountain. Perhaps the most effective organizer of funds from personal income is indeed the labor movement. Yet we have seen that union expenditures of all kinds are tiny when compared with political expenditures of business. Another indicator is assets. Total union assets in the United States, exclusive of welfare and pension funds usually administered by employers, are roughly $3 billion. Corporate assets total roughly $2 trillion’ (p. 196). All of which, granted the preponderant direction of business contributions, makes it all the more remarkable that the Democrats have won the Presidency all but four times since 1932 and Labour has been in office in Britain in all but four years since 1964.

24 See Reshetar, John S. Jr., The Soviet Polity: Government and Politics in the USSR, 2nd edn. (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 188.Google Scholar See also Towster, Julian, Political Power in the USSR, 1917–74 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948)Google Scholar and Conquest, Robert, The Soviet Political System (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 112Google Scholar: ‘The way in which decisions are reached at (Central Committee) plenums is shrouded in mystery. The edited accounts of certain plenums published since December 1958, throw little light on how differences are resolved. Whether there is genuine debate in the Central Committee on the reports submitted by the Presidium (Politburo) or the Secretariat or whether the Presidium has sufficient authority to bulldoze its plans through the Central Committee it is not possible to know with certainty, though it must be stated that the Presidium has never been overthrown by the Central Committee.’

25 Consider, for example, Towster, , Political Power in the USSR, pp. 284–5Google Scholar: ‘The general proceedings of the Council (of Ministers) are secret and no minutes are published. A major part of its decisions, however, become known through journal publication in the “Collection of Decisions and Ordinances” of the government’ (p. 285). See also Scott, Derek J. R., Russian Political Institutions, 4th edn. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969)Google Scholar, on procedures of the Soviet highest legislative organs (pp. 119–22); and see also pp. 234–6. Also see Hulicka, Karel and Hulicka, Irene M., Soviet Institutions: The Individual and Society (Boston, Mass.: The Christopher Publishing House, 1967), pp. 210–48Google Scholar on legislative bodies. ‘The Supreme Soviet… has never been known to censure the Presidium for any of its activities, and has consistently provided automatic ratification for all Presidium decrees (p. 234). More recently, see also Vanneman, Peter, The Supreme Soviet: Politics and the Legislative Process in the Soviet Political System (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977).Google Scholar His account does not offer any evidence of the legislature's censure of the party leadership.

26 One might include here such general works as those of Jennings, Ivor, Cabinet Government, 3rd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackintosh, J. P., The British Cabinet, 2nd edn. (London: Stevens, 1968)Google Scholar; King, Anthony, ed., The British Prime Minister (London: Macmillan, 1968)Google Scholar; Keith, A. B., The British Cabinet System, 2nd edn. (London: Stevens, 1952)Google Scholar; a myriad of more specialized studies on various aspects of executive operations, and the memoirs of many, if not countless, former ministers. The richness of this literature in the last sixty years simply has no equivalent in scope and breadth in the Soviet experience.

27 Recent student demonstrations (1978) in Georgia and Azerbaidzhan resulting in a sanctioning of native languages in new drafts of local constitutions are among approximations: but only approximations. Like strikes and revolts in hard-labour camps, they lack legitimacy in the Soviet political system. See also White, Stephen, ‘Communist Systems and the “Iron Law of Pluralism”’, British Journal of Political Science, VIII (1978), 101–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Hough, , Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, p. 197.Google Scholar

29 See Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership With Reflections on Johnson and Nixon (New York: Wiley, 1976), Chaps. 4, 5Google Scholar, on professional reputation and public prestige. As the author puts it, ‘reputation, by itself, does not persuade, but it can make persuasion easier, or harder, or impossible’ (p. 131).

30 That the proceedings of Soviet courts can be substantially shielded when the CPSU leadership so desires, was once again demonstrated in July 1978. The mother of dissident Anatoly Shcharansky could not gain admittance to the courtroom where her son was being tried on a capital charge; nor could members of the so-called dissident community or, for the most part, Western newsmen.

31 See Ploss, Sidney I., Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agricultural Policy 1953–1963 (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Says Truman: ‘Collections of people with some common characteristics may be groups in the proper sense if they interact with some frequency on the basis of their shared characteristics’ (The Governmental Process, p. 241).Google Scholar

33 Truman, , The Governmental Process, pp. 257–60.Google Scholar

34 Consider for example the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. This Act was passed in the face of strong opposition from auto manufacturers. At the time, the big three auto manufacturers were among the five largest U.S. corporations in terms of sales volume (‘The Fortune Directory: The 500 Largest U.S. Industrial Corporations’, Fortune, LXXV (06 1967, pp. 196–7Google Scholar). Concerning the auto industry's opposition, see Nader, Ralph, Unsafe at Any Speed (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1965)Google Scholar and Courtney, Dan, ‘The Face in the Mirror at General Motors’, Fortune, LXXIV, 08 1966, pp. 117–19Google Scholar: ‘The record leaves the distinct impression that during the 1960s, business was fighting a defensive rearguard action against other interest groups in Congress, and that it failed more often than not.’ See also Jacoby, Neil H., Corporate Power and Social Responsibility (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 155.Google Scholar For a similar view of corporate power in America during the 1960s, see, for example, Epstein, Edwin M., The Corporation in American Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), esp. pp. 298–304.Google Scholar For an earlier assessment, see Gable, Richard W., ‘NAM: Influential Lobby or Kiss of-Death?’, Journal of Politics, XV (1953), 254–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Between 1933 and 1945 the NAM's conception of social needs did not keep pace with rapidly changing conditions. Its proposals were diametrically opposed to the solutions approved by the Congress and the public. In these years no major labor legislation was enacted which was acceptable to the NAM, except for portions of the war-time Smith-Connally Act’ (p. 270).