II. Ideological party state and “its” society
T
he establishment of each totalitarian order in history follows a similar pattern. On the one hand, the new rulers rely on the massive use of terror, hence making the submission of society to the state possible in the first place. The usually peaceful post-totalitarian transformation of the system had thus been preceded by a violent totalitarian transformation a few decades earlier. On the other hand, all totalitarian systems are products of crisis situations, offering totalitarian political groupings the chance to seize power and subsequently implement their ideology. Initially such a development could be observed in Russia. The Bolsheviks, a sectarian party of almost no social significance, profited from the crisis of the tsarist empire during the First World War. In 1917, Lenin’s party was the only one in Russia determined to seize power by all means available, taking advantage of the chaos that had broken out in the country. After the Bolsheviks had taken power, Russian society was cut off from its history. Social groups and strata that clung to the values and traditions of pre-socialist society (not only of the old regime) – the aristocracy, the free peasantry, the weak bourgeoisie, most of the priesthood, and the parts of the Intelligentsia who were faithful to its ethos – were eliminated. The traditional culture was consistently destroyed or forcibly adapted to the new times. In the early 1930s this transformation was completed, and Soviet society was thoroughly subordinated to the state. Prior to the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in 1941, Stalin had managed just in time to destroy the apparatus of the Communist Party, including the officer corps of the Red Army, hence getting rid of potential competitors in the power struggle. In the GULAG, which had already been established under Lenin, about a tenth of the population worked themselves to death.
all totalitarian systems are products of crisis situations
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