Difference Between Authoritarian and Totalitarian States

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe political systems whereby a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics. The term has been applied to many states, including: the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Shōwa Japan, German Democratic Republic (East Germany), People's Republic of Hungary, Socialist Republic of Romania, People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Ethiopia, People's Republic of China, Democratic Kampuchea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) [1] and Communist Czechoslovakia. Political opposition has also applied this term to the Saudi regime. Difference between authoritarian and totalitarian states According to Karl Loewenstein, "the term 'Authoritarian' denotes a political organization in which the single power holder - an individual person or 'dictator', an assembly, a committee, a junta, or a party monopolizes political power. The term 'Authoritarian' refers rather to the structure of government than to the structure of society. An Authoritarian regime confines itself to political control of the state. "The governmental techniques of a totalitarian regime are necessarily Authoritarian. But a totalitarian regime does much more. It attempts to mold the private life, soul, and morals of citizens to a dominant ideology. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into every nook and cranny of society; its ambition is total. "Totalitarian regimes seek to destroy civil society i.e. communities that operate independently of the State. Neither the Italian fascists nor the Nazis completely 'destroyed their respective social structures', and so these countries 'could rapidly return to normalcy' after defeat in World War II. In contrast, attempts to reform the regime in the USSR 'led to nowhere because every non- governmental institution, whether social or economic, had to be built from scratch. The result was neither reform of Communism nor establishment of democracy, but a progressive breakdown of organized life'".

REPRESSION AND TERROR: KIROV MURDER AND PURGES The murder of Sergei Kirov on December 1, 1934, set off a chain of events that culminated in the Great Terror of the 1930s. Kirov was a full member of the ruling Politburo, leader of the Leningrad party apparatus, and an influential member of the ruling elite. His concern for the welfare of the workers in Leningrad and his skill as an orator had earned him considerable popularity. Some party members had even approached him secretly with the proposal that he take over as general secretary. It is doubtful that Kirov represented an immediate threat to Stalin's predominance, but he did disagree with some of Stalin's policies, and Stalin had begun to doubt the loyalty of members of the Leningrad apparatus. In need of a pretext for launching a broad purge, Stalin evidently decided that murdering Kirov would be expedient. The murder was carried out by a young assassin named Leonid Nikolaev. Recent evidence has indicated that Stalin and the NKVD planned the crime. Stalin then used the murder as an excuse for introducing draconian laws against political crime and for conducting a witch-hunt for alleged conspirators against Kirov. Over the next four-and-a-half years, millions of innocent party members and others were arrested -- many of them for complicity in the vast plot that supposedly lay behind the killing of Kirov. From the Soviet point of view, his murder was probably the crime of the century because it paved the way for the Great Terror. Stalin never visited Leningrad again and directed one of his most vicious post-War purges against the city -- Russia's historic window to the West.

The following interview is between Bukharin, a party member, and the party leaders-namely Stalin. Bukharin is indicted with complicity, guilt, in the murder of Kirov and subversion of the party.

Bukharin: I'd like to say a few words about terror. Comrades, the question of membership in the party seems to me simply to be naive: if a person takes the terrorist point of view against the leadership of the party, then the question as to whether he may be a party member is a naive question.

I have absolutely no relationship with terror, not by a single word or thought. When I hear these things, it seems to me that the conversation concerns other people; perhaps I am sitting here and hearing about another person. I do not understand how I can be charged with such an accusation; to me this is absolutely incomprehensible [and] I look on this as "a sheep looking at new gates" [i.e., I feel totally lost in foreign territory].

POZERN: These are not "new gates"--that's the problem.

BUKHARIN: To your way of thinking, perhaps they are not new gates, but then I'm not a sheep either.[intervening pages of transcript missing]

ALTAEVA-PRIGORNAIA, Petrakova. [stenographer]

STALIN: You should not and do not have the right to slander yourself. This is a most criminal thing.

MOLOTOV: That which you have stated concerning the famine is simply an anti-Soviet thing.

VOICES FROM THE ROOM: A counterrevolutionary thing!

STALIN: You must come around to our position. Trotskii with his disciples, Zinov'ev and Kamenev, at one time worked with Lenin, and now these people have negotiated an agreement with Hitler. After this, can we label such things as shocking? Absolutely not. After everything that has happened to these gentlemen, former comrades, who have negotiated an agreement with Hitler, a sellout of the USSR, there is nothing surprising in human affairs. Everything has to be proven and not [just] replied to using exclamation points and question marks.

MOLOTOV: And anti-Soviet matters should not be engaged in.

MOLOTOV: Let us call a recess, comrades.

What does the Kirov murder say about the methodology of control in a Totalitarian state? Is this type of government sustainable in the long run; why or why not?