¹ Rigby, , “Traditional, Market, and Organizational Societies and the USSR,” World Politics 16 (July 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar This excellent essay still offers useful ways of looking at Soviet politics.

² Meyer, , “The USSR, Incorporated,” in Treedgold, Donald W., ed., The Development of the USSR: An Exchange of Views (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).Google Scholar Meyer elaborates the concept more fully in The Soviet Political System (New York: Random House, 1965).

³ Linden, , Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957–1964 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966).Google Scholar Linden's excellent monograph, The Soviet Party-State (New York: Praeger, 1983), strikes me as somewhat at odds with his effort to develop his “conflict” model. Rather, his insightful treatment of the ideological foundations of the system places him closer to the totalitarian model.

⁴ Skilling, and Griffiths, , eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

⁵ For a critique of its limitations, see Odom, , “A Dissenting View on the Group Approach to Soviet Politics,” World Politics 28 (July 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Skilling, , “Interest Groups and Communist Politics Revisited,” World Politics 36 (October 1983), 24–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Moore, , Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and Socialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 36.Google Scholar

⁸ See the discussion in the Russian Review 45 (October 1986), 357–416; and 46 (October 1987), 379–431.

₉ Huntington discusses these three features, which are necessary for a model to be “accepted and useful.” See Huntington, , “Paradigms of American Politics: Beyond the One, the Two, and the Many,” Political Science Quarterly 89 (March 1974), 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₁₀ The literature on the totalitarian model is growing, and the variety of arguments is large. I am sidestepping most of the debate by taking only the Friedrich-Brzezinski variant. The concept has too many authors and too much history to list them all briefly and elaborate them fairly. Proponents who offer strong, commonsense analysis include Linz, Juan J., “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson, eds., Handbook of Political Science (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 3:1745–411Google Scholar; Moore (fn. 7),36ff.; and Hassner, Pierre, “Communist Totalitarianism: The Translantic Vagaries of a Concept,” Washington Quarterly 6 (Fall 1985).Google Scholar Although this selection does injustice to a large number of other scholars, it at least captures important highlights.

₁₁ See Arch Getty, J., Origins of the Great Purges (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hough, Jerry, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 174–78.Google Scholar

₁₂ Part of the problem with “terror” as an analytical concept is defining it. The authors of the model would surely qualify as terror the fear of incarceration and execution with no serious judicial process, if one had seen that happen to a significant number of fellow citizens. Fear of losing one's job, career, and status with no recourse might also qualify, but agreement on this definition might not be as wide. I have no solution to this definitional problem beyond a commonsense judgment that fear was more widespread and far more significant for Soviet citizens than for those living under most other political systems; and in some states, fear and terror for some parts of the population may be as severe as it ever was in the Soviet Union. In general, however, the Soviet system seemed to create that climate on a broader scale than did most nontotalitarian forms of dictatorship.

₁₃ For a debate on this topic, see Herspring, Dale R. and Volgyes, Ivan, eds., Civil-Military Relations in Communist Systems (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979), chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

₁₄ Although Giovanni Sartori rejects most attacks on the totalitarian concept, he objects to grouping these six characteristics as a totalitarian “syndrome,” noting that some of them are shared by liberal democracies, e.g., control of the armed forces and the police. He does not see the “interconnectedness” necessary to make them a syndrome. See Sartori, , The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1987), 193–203.Google Scholar As we watch the Soviet Union and the new East European regimes struggle with system change, however, the interconnectedness of the characteristics becomes painfully evident.

₁₅ Brzezinski, , The Permanent Purge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₁₆ Tucker, , “The Dictator and Totalitarianism,” World Politics 17 (July 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₁₇ This assertion, of course, eschews the traditional philosophical debate about determinism and free will. Western political science, however, generally takes as one of its distinguishing philosophical foundations that humans can and do make choices in some “free will” sense; this assumption is essential for the normative side of the discipline. For other disciplines—psychology, sociology, and anthropology—the assumption is much less important. Even Marx assigns a critical role to voluntarism: the working class has to achieve “consciousness” of the role of property ownership so that it will understand why revolution makes sense. Some recent trends in political science, i.e., the use of rational-choice theory, seem destined to revive the old philosophical debate in the guise of “human agency.”

₁₈ Essentially this is the starting assumption for “social historians” such as Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Arch Getty, J., and Manning, Roberta T.. See the discussions in the Russian Review (fn. 8).Google Scholar These scholars use the dichotomy “from above” / “from below” to study the Stalin period in a way that ridicules the totalitarian model. To a large degree, they have adopted a straw man as an alternative in their effort to make a straw man of the totalitarian model.

₁₉ Merle Fainsod offers abundant empirical evidence of this local political voluntarism. See Fainsod, , Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).Google Scholar Getty (fn.11) lets a similar impression emerge from his evidence, though his thesis may seem to say otherwise.

₂₀ For a case study of this kind of bureaucratic diffusion of power and its periodic recentralization, see Odom, , The Soviet Volunteers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

₂₁ Hammer, , The Politics of Oligarchy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), 238.Google Scholar

₂₂ Hough, , “Gorbachev Consolidating Power,” Problems of Communism 36 (July—August 1987), 21.Google Scholar

₂₃ Hough (fn. 11), 277–78, 544.

₂₄ Ibid., 556–76.

₂₅ See Hough, , Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1980).Google Scholar

₂₆ To be sure, Hough never made highly specific predictions on this point, and he occasionally provided caveats—especially in the final chapter of How the Soviet Union Is Governed (fn. 11)—but this was hardly of sufficient weight to balance his optimistic message about liberal trends in Soviet political change.

₂₇ Breslauer, , Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 3.Google Scholar

₂₈ See, e.g., Cohen, Stephen F., “Gorbachev the Great,” New York Times, March 11, 1991, p. A15.Google Scholar

₂₉ Skilling is the exception. He flatly judged the prospects for such an outcome to be very small.

₃₀ See Colton, , The Dilemmas of Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), 32.Google Scholar

₃₁ For this line of analysis, see Odom, “How Far Can Soviet Reform Go?” Problems of Communism 34 (November–December 1987).Google Scholar

₃₂ Motyl, , Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 64–71.Google Scholar

₃₃ For firsthand reports on this kind of behavior, see Simis, Konstantin, USSR: The Corrupt Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).Google Scholar See also Klugman, Jeffry, The New Soviet Elite (New York: Praeger, 1989).Google Scholar His analysis of interview data shows how ambitious Soviet citizens, before 1985, saw the nature of opportunity and the requirements for getting ahead. They understood the role of the Party, the ideology, and the state monopoly of the economy, and they quickly learned how to make connections, to join cliques, and to climb various bureaucratic ladders. They were not particularly fearful of being purged, but they greatly feared being cast into poverty by exclusion from political circles.

₃₄ Brzezinski, Z. K., ed., Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

₃₅ By “middle-range” theories, I mean what Robert K. Merton defined as “theories of the middle range: theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization, and social change.” See Merton, , Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1968), 39.Google Scholar

₃₆ Ibid., 253–55.

₃₇ Crozier, , The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).Google Scholar

₃₈ Wilson, , Political Organizations (New York: Basic Books, 1973).Google Scholar

₃₉ See Hillman, Arye L. and Schnytzer, Adi, “Illegal Economic Activities and Purges in a Soviet-Type Economy: A Rent-Seeking Perspective,” International Review of Law and Economics 6 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₄₀ Shlapentokh, , Public and Private Life of the Soviet People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 18–23.Google Scholar

₄₁ See, e.g., Major General Tabunov, N., “Dialektik klassogo i obshchechelovetskogo,” Kommunist vooruzhennikh sil 8 (1989).Google Scholar Tabunov struggled to discover a “dialectic” between dass and humankind interests that salvages the international class struggle.

₄₂ Pravda, August 6, 1988.

₄₃ See Mann, Dawn, “First Secretaries of Krai and Oblast Party Committees,” RL Report on the USSR 1, no. 41 (October 13, 1989).Google Scholar For the turnover in the senior military ranks, see Brewer, Linda, “The Soviet Military Elite under Gorbachev” (Unpublished paper, the Air Force Intelligence Agency, August 22, 1989).Google Scholar Virtually the entire high command of the military down to the army and division levels was changed in a couple of years. Of a total of 155 krai and oblast party secretaries, Mann finds all but 23 changed. The change in central committee membership in Gorbachev's first years was greater than at any other time since 1961.

₄₄ Vera Tolz offers the first effort to analyze the proliferation of new parties. She concludes that “it is more likely that outbreaks of popular discontent will occur than that there will be gradual transformation of the country into a democratic, multiparty state”; see Tolz, , The USSR's Emerging Multiparty System (New York: Praeger, 1990), 93.Google Scholar

₄₅ Boris Kagarlitsky offers an eyewitness account of efforts to organize political movements on an all-Union basis, the obstacles they faced, and the contrasting organizational strength of those in some republics. See Kagarlitsky, , Farewell Perestroika: A Soviet Chronicle (New York: Verso, 1990).Google Scholar

₄₆ See Izvestiia, October 9, 1990, for a report on GLAVLIT (the censorship bureau) and its list of topics to be censored.

₄₇ Throughout his personal chronicle of political developments, Kagarlitsky (fn. 45) offers examples of officially guided media attention and deliberate neglect of various political groups to shape both domestic and foreign perceptions. For considerable detail on the politics of media controls, see an unpublished paper by Peniston, Bradley, “Gorbachev, Glasnost, and GLAVLIT: The Persistence of Controls in the Soviet Media” (New Haven: SEES, Yale University, April 15, 1991).Google Scholar

₄₈ For elaboration of “contestation,” see Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).

₄₉ For essays that demonstrate how serious this error has been, see Rowen, Henry and Wolf, Charles Jr, eds., The Impoverished Empire (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1990).Google Scholar

₅₀ This case is vigorously advanced by Kireyev, A., “Konversiia v sovetskom izmerenii,” Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn' 4 (1990).Google Scholar

₅₁ John Tedstrom reports this figure for 1988 and also a continuing increase in 1989. It was probably larger in 1990 and 1991. See Tedstrom, , “The Soviet Cooperative Movement: An Update,” Report on the USSR 1, no. 41 (1989), 3–5.Google Scholar

₅₂ Brandt, Joseph C., “Economic Reform and Soviet Nationality,” Telos, no. 84 (Summer 1990).Google Scholar

₅₃ For this point specifically and for an insightful analysis of the forces of change in the Soviet economy, see Anders Aslund, “Prospects for Economic Reform in the USSR” (Paper presented at the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics, 1991).

₅₄ See RFE/RL Daily Report 170 (September 9, 1990); 183 (September 25, 1990); and 188 (October 2, 1990).

₅₅ See Odom, , “The Soviet Military in Transition,” Problems of Communism (May–June 1990).Google Scholar

₅₆ See Herspring and Volgyes (fn. 13), especially the chapters by Kolkowicz and Colton.

₅₇ See Sokolov, Vladimir, “Reflections on the Variants of Our Immediate Future: To a Market Economy under the Cover of the Army?” Literaturnaya gazeta 12 (September 1990).Google Scholar

₅₈ Lindblom, , Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

₅₉ Huntington, , Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar is perhaps the best example. More recently, Philip G. Roeder has criticized Huntington's approach but has remained in the political development paradigm of analysis. See Roeder, , “Modernization and Participation in the Leninist Development Model,” American Political Science Review 83 (September 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₆₀ Rigby (fn. 1).

₆₁ Rustow, , “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2 (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₆₂ Huntington, , “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₆₃ Dahl (fn. 48).

₆₄ Lipset, , Political Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 27–63.Google Scholar

₆₅ Lindblom (fn. 58), 162–69.

⁶⁶ Freeman, , Democracy and Markets (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

₆₇ For reasons of space, I do not spell out an important distinction between “liberal” and “democracy.” Sartori (fn. 14) states it succinctly: “We cannot speak of political freedom without referring to liberalism—liberalism, I insist, not democracy” (p. 309). The diffusion of power through private property has been most important for liberalism, that is, the defense of individual rights. It by no means ensures it, but liberalism has preceded the broadening of the democratic political franchise in most Western liberal democracies, and the concern with rights has underpinned constitutionalism far more predominantly than concern for the right of democratic majorities to decide “who gets what, when, and how.”

₆₈ Hough (fn. 25).

₆₉ Lewin, , The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1989).Google Scholar

₇₀ See, e.g., Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

₇₁ Huntington, , Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar Huntington has his critics concerning the applicability of some of his concepts to the Soviet political system. Roeder (fn. 59) challenges Huntington by distinguishing between institutionalized “participation” (which Huntington's “civic” class of systems involves) and institutionalized “coproduction” (which Roeder sees as the Soviet reality).

₇₂ Migdal, , Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capacities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

₇₃ Tucker, , “Culture, Political Culture, and Communist Societies,” Political Science Quarterly 88 (June 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar