appeals to national pride, massive rallies and demonstrations, early
political and military victories and by the restoration of full employ-
ment rather than just by terror.Soviet government
The Nazi Party being organised primarily as a militia for street
fighting was less effective in asserting total control than the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The CPSU was organised
on the ‘cell’ system based on the workplace. This reflected the
factory-based organisation of the original Bolshevik faction of the
Social Democratic Party. It proved ideal for asserting control not only
over factories but also over government offices, army units, schools
and universities. Every communist had the duty to form a cell in his
or her workplace and to participate through the cell in ensuring that
party policy was carried out there.
The CPSU as an anti-capitalist party also found it much easier to
assert total control over economic activity through the economic
planning system. Stalin’s use of the secret police and of concentration
camps might also be seen as a more thorough-going attempt at total
control in that the ordinary Russian population, the army and even
original Bolshevik party members found themselves the victims of
the terror.
The institutions of government and politics were greatly trans-
formed as a result of the revolution. The Red Army replaced the
Tsarist Army. Legislative institutions were totally remodelled.
Ordinary citizens were expected to participate enthusiastically in
politics rather than be passively loyal to the tsar.
It is clear that in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union terror played a
much smaller part in the political system, with self-interest, national
pride and conservative acquiescence in a long-established system
playing a much greater one.
Despite the differences, to the authors it does seem that Nazi
Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union appeared to have much in
common and that one can construct an extreme ‘ideal type’ of
government – ‘totalitarian’ government – which encapsulates their
similarities in terms of both all-encompassing scope and ruthless
methods. It would not be impossible to imagine, say, an ecological
or a religious totalitarian regime in the future using modern152 STATES