How to Write Better Essays

2. Leader & the party

Subjugated the party – ideology =whatever the leader says

it is

(a) owed his rise to power to the party

(b) party =guardian of the ideology

3. Charismatic authority

(a) vast propaganda machine

• ‘infallible pointsman’ (Koestler)
  (b) omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent
  (i) all-powerful
  e.g. five-year plans
  (ii) all-knowing – on any subject
  (iii) ever-present
  e.g. air travel & hoardings
  (c) outmanoeuvred opponents
  e.g. Hitler v. Ernst Röhm
  Stalin v. Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev & Bukharin

B Control over private morality

No distinction between public & private – what is private & moral

=public & political.

e.g. Moscow joke, 1930s

1. propaganda
   
   
   • on streets/radio/newspapers
   
   
   
   


2. Indoctrination in schools
   
   
   • textbooks/lessons/teachers
   
   
   
   


3. Suppression of independent institutions
   e.g. churches/professional bodies


4. Writing/artistic expression =in the approved form
   e.g. Zhdarnov – First Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934 –
   ‘socialist realism’

Processing the Ideas 91

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