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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
There is general agreement among Western scholars that the modern totalitarian state is distinguished in part by its possession of a unitary and systematically elaborated ideology. While it will be found that expert opinions vary considerably in regard to the importance of the role played by ideology in the origin and continuation of totalitarianism, there is little question but that the ruling power of the totalitarian society is not indifferent to the relationship between national ideology and popular attitudes. Indeed, history shows that the rulers of twentieth-century totalitarian states have devoted considerable effort to the development among their citizenries of attitudes of acceptance toward the social philosophies and goals associated with their regimes.
1 Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Totalitarianism: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Mass., 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See especially the papers and discussion included in Part III—“Totalitarianism and Ideology,” pp. 87–137.
2 “Only by radically remolding the teaching, organization, and training of the youth shall we be able to ensure mat the result of the efforts of the younger generation will be the creation of a society that will be unlike the old society, i.e., a Communist society.” Lenin, V. I., “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, Speech Delivered at the Third All-Russian Congress of the Russian Young Communist League,” October 2, 1920, in Lenin: Selected Works, II, Moscow, 1947, p. 661.Google Scholar
“A few words about the members of the Young Communist League, young men and women, in the collective farms. The youth is our future, our hope, comrades. The youth must take our place, the place of the old people. It must carry our banner to final victory. Among the peasants there are not a few old people, borne down by the burden of the past, burdened with the habits and the recollections of the old life. Naturally, they are not always able to keep pace with the Party, to keep pace with the Soviet Government. But that cannot be said of our youth. They are free from the burden of the past, and it is easiest for them to assimilate Lenin's behests.” Stalin, Joseph, “Speech Delivered at the First All-Union Congress of Collective-Farm Shock Workers,” February 19, 1933Google Scholar, in Stalin, J., Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1947, p. 451.Google Scholar
“The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. … This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing” Speech given by Adolf Hitler on May 1, 1937, published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, May 3, 1937, and cited in Baynes, Norman H., ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922—August 1939, London, 1942, p. 549.Google Scholar
“Some other system of government, a system not ours, the demoliberal system, the system of those whom we despise, may think it proper to renounce the education of the younger generations. We not! In this respect we are intractable. Ours must be the teaching! These children must be educated in our religious faith; but we have the duty of integrating this education, we need to give these youngsters the sense of virility, of power, of conquest; and above all we need to inspire them with our faith, and to inflame them with our hopes” Mussolini, Benito “Report to the Chamber of Deputies on the Agreement with the Lateran,” 1929Google Scholar, cited in Finer, Herman, Mussolini's Italy, London, 1935. p. 428.Google Scholar
3 Accounts in English of various aspects of totalitarian youth movements may be found in the following: Fainsod, Merle, “The Komsomols—A Study of Youth Under Dictatorship,” American Political Science Review, XLV (March 1951), pp. 18–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewin, Herbert S., “Hitler Youth and the Boy Scouts of America: A Comparison of Aims,” Human Relations, 1 (1947), pp. 206–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brady, Robert A., The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism, New York, 1937Google Scholar, especially Chapter v, “Training the Youth to Become Soldiers of Labor,” pp. 161–98; Finer, op. cit., especially Chapter xv, “The Fascist Party: Youth Organizations,” pp. 426–54.
4 Compare Davis, Kingsley, “The Sociology of Parent-Youth Conflict,” American Sociological Review, v (August 1940), pp. 523–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Davis notes that rapid social change, when taken in conjunction with the slower rates of socialization of older persons, results in a general tendency for attitudes of parents to lag behind those of their children in modern industrial society.
5 This Project has been conducted by the Russian Research Center of Harvard University under the sponsorship of the Officer Education Research Laboratory of Air Research and Development Command, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, under contract No. AF 33 (038)–12909. Reproduction of this article in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. Grateful acknowledgment is here made to the Russian Research Center for the assistance which has facilitated completion of this study.
6 All ages are as of 1950; father's occupation is the last one reported prior to World War II.
7 It was frequently noted that this was done only after die children were old enough to be trusted, or that the children were carefully warned to keep silent about such matters when outside the family.
8 Responses from this group are not included in the textual or tabular numerical totals.
9 Isolated, that is, in the sense that members of the larger kin group are in the typical case not particularly close in either a residential or emotional sense to the members of the immediate individual family. In this respect the Soviet family, at least in its urban Slavic variety, does not differ from the predominant family type in the United States. See Parsons, Talcott, “The Kinship System of the Contemporary United States,” American Anthropologist, XLV (January 1943), pp. 22–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 The advantage to the individual parent of peace within the family is clearly expressed in the following exchange:
(How did you explain to your children those events in the USSR whose negative side was clear to you?) On this question, the children had much instruction in school, and in order not to become upset, I kept silent. (56-year-old female, bookkeeper)
11 Compare with die role of children in the first-generation immigrant family in the United States. For example: “In the face of this whole development [i.e., the pressures and attractions of American life] the immigrants were helpless. They had neither the will nor the ability to turn their offspring into other directions. The nominal authority of the fathers was often halfheartedly used; they were cruelly torn by the conflicting wishes that their sons be like themselves and yet lead better lives than they. Sensing that the school and street would tear the next generation away, the parents knew not how to counteract those forces without injuring their own flesh and blood.” From Handlin, Oscar, The Uprooted, Boston, 1951, pp. 252–53.Google Scholar See also Warner, W. Lloyd and Srole, Leo, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups, New Haven, Conn., 1945Google Scholar, espe cially Chapter vi, “The Family,” pp. 103–55.
12 Changes in family relationships subsequent to regime-induced deprivations are dis cussed at length in Geiger, Kent, “Deprivation and Solidarity in the Soviet Urban Family,” American Sociological Review, xx (January 1955), pp. 57–68.Google Scholar
13 Consult Fainsod, op. cit., especially p. 36, for information on the weaknesses of youth organizations in rural areas. The differential exposure of various population groups to the mass media is discussed in Rossi, Peter H. and Bauer, Raymond A., “Some Patterns of Soviet Communications Behavior,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XVI (Winter 1952–1953), pp. 653–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rossi and Bauer characterize the Soviet collective farmer as a person who is “almost isolated from the communications network” (p. 658).
14 In 1937 Y. Yaroslavsky, head of the League of Militant Atheists, estimated that about two-thirds of the urban adult population over 16 called themselves atheists whereas in the country from one-half to two-thirds were believers. Cited in Timasheff, N. S., Religion in Soviet Russia, 1617–1942, New York, 1942, p. 65.Google Scholar Harvard Project data on refugee attitudes toward religion also indicate that religious belief increases in strength as one descends in the social class hierarchy.
15 Lorimer concludes that the net migration from rural areas to cities must have been at least 23 million persons in the inter-census period, 1926 to 1939. Lorimer, Frank, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects, Geneva, 1946, pp. 145–50.Google Scholar
16 Inkeles, Alex, “Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union: 1940–1950,” American Sociological Review, xv (August 1950), pp. 465–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 There is, however, some evidence to the contrary. It is likely that a considerable portion of the frustration engendered by difficult material living conditions is expressed and dissipated within the context of the family itself. See Geiger, op. cit.
18 Note, for example, the case of the trust director's son (p. 197 above) who felt mat a man “in his father's position” had to use more than the usual amount of care.
19 Geiger, , op. cit., pp. 65–66.Google Scholar
20 Forms of property ownership, relations between church and state, etc.