476 POLSKA LUDOWA
describe the essential nature of the beast. Especially after 1956, when Stalinism
was overthrown and a less brutal brand of Communism approved, there was a
strong tendency abroad to talk both of 'liberation' or 'convergence'. The
assumption seemed to be that the hawkish hardliners in the Communist leader-
ship were gradually losing out to dovish reformers, and that in consequence the
political outlook of the Soviet Bloc was edging ever closer to that of the western
democracies. It was a great illusion. In particular, there was a marked reluctance
to recognise the many similarities between post-war Communism and pre-war
Fascism; an odd failure to examine the practical workings of the nomenklatura
system; and a strange inability to see the institutionalized social divisions which
resulted from it. The post-war political debate in the West was strongly
influenced by the fact that many right-minded politicians had flirted with
Communist ideals in their youth and had spent their formative years during the
war fighting against Fascism. Certainly in Britain and America, the wartime
alliance between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union had deep and long-
term consequences. Even in the Cold War, Communism was more often seen as
a good system which had gone off the rails than an evil system that had never
been on the rails in the first place. As a product of the 'Extreme Left', it was gen-
erally regarded as the exact opposite of Fascism, which was perceived as a prod-
uct of the 'Extreme Right'. The ideas put forward by the theory of
totalitarianism, which showed Communism and Fascism to be similar brands of
the same political phenomenon, did not gain universal support. One can only
recommend that anyone trying to understand the realities of late 20th-century
Communism should list the surprising number of commonalties which it dis-
played with its Fascist rival:
a nationalist-socialist gangsterism the psychology
ideology- bureaucratic of hatred
pseudo-science elephantiasis pre-emptive censorship
Utopian goals propaganda coercion
a dualist party-state the Aesthetics of collectivism
the Fuberprinzip Power universalism
the Dialectical Enemy contempt for liberal
moral nihilism democracy^66
Most foreign descriptions of the People's Republic used labels such as 'One
Party State', whilst stressing 'authoritarian' features such as 'the secret police,'
the censorship and the command economy. These features were certainly pre-
sent and important. But they were not really adequate and did not provide the
key to how it all worked. For this, one must necessarily look further into the
nomenklatura system and the associated Party-State:
'It was an axiom of Soviet practice that every position of authority in every sphere of pub-
lic life must be held by persons dependent on the grace and favour of the ruling Party. All
state and Party officials were subject to rigorous hierarchical discipline, akin to that of an
army. Their higher ranks formed a closed elite enjoying monopoly power together with