relatively small self-contained state focused on a city, though the agricultural
hinterland was seen as equally a part. Citizenship of this unit was the principal
political identity, and was vastly more important than the much less formal
notion of being a Greek, or even of being part of the various federations of city
states that existed from time to time. It was to the small, almost neighbourhood
community of the polis that loyalty went, and from which protection and
benefit could be hoped for. Theorists varied in their accounts of the reason for
the vital nature of the polis, but, especially during democratic periods, the
main idea was that participation in the life of the polis gave moral development
to the citizen, organized their religion, provided their culture, and was the
overriding duty of the citizen or even the metic (non-citizen but legally
resident alien). The polis concept is particularly important when contrasted
with thestate of natureorsocial contractthinkers of theEnlightenment,
because few Greeks would have thought that someone living in a state of
nature was even truly human, so important was the collective bond and shared
identity of fellow members of a city state. This was more powerful, both in
theory and practice, than the patriotism expected later of a subject in a
Europeannation state, in part because of the difference in scale and the
impossibility of genuine participation. Indeed later, not only during the
Roman Empire when lip service at least was paid to the importance of Roman
citizenship, but in, for example, medieval Italian city states, this focus on very
local loyalty was to prove a major barrier to building national communities.
Even during periods of what the Greeks called ‘tyranny’, when actual
participation in decision-making was denied, the sense of collective interest
and identity was stronger than under similar but more recent regimes.
Politburo
Technically the Politburo, the Political Bureau of theCommunist Party of
the Soviet Union (CPSU)—or other communist party organized along
Soviet lines—was just a committee in permanent session of the irregularly
meeting Party Congress, no more than, for example, the National Executive
Committee of the BritishLabour Party. In practice the Politburo was as near
as the Soviet Union came to having acabinet, a body continuously directing
policy and making all urgent, and many day-to-day, decisions. Its exact role
and power, as well as its membership, varied enormously over the period from
1917 to 1991. UnderStalinit hardly met, while underKhrushchevit was
more or less a rubber stamp for his decisions, being packed with his men.
(When Khrushchev was overthrown, this was achieved by a majority forming
against him not in the Politburo, but in the Central Committee of the party, a
much larger and less controllable body.) After Khrushchev’s time it became
more representative of the various forces and interests in the Soviet Union, and
Politburo