Abstract
A prominent feature of Marxist—Leninist regimes which have come to power through indigenous revolutions has been the emergence of exaggerated cults of the leader. While such phenomena have attracted scholarly attention in the West, much of this has tended to see the leader cult as stemming primarily from the psychic desire for self-aggrandisement on the part of the individual leader concerned.1 While the desire for personal gratification may have been a significant contributor to the genesis of leader cults, emphasis upon this aspect has obscured the importance of such cults for their respective political systems. The leader cult has been systemically important in a wide variety of ways, the most obvious being its role in establishing the legitimacy of the political power, position and prominence of its principal. This role was clearly evident in the cases of the two cults with which this paper is concerned, those of Stalin and Mao, and is suggested by the circumstances surrounding their emergence: both developed after prolonged periods of faction-fighting which ended in the political victory of the principals of the respective cults. The Stalin cult burst onto the scene in the week beginning 18 December 1929, three weeks after the official recantation of the Right Opposition effectively marked the end of the leadership struggles of the 1920s.
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Notes
See for example, Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929 (London, 1974 )
and Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality. Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution ( Harmondsworth, 1970 ). The Mao cult has been much better served than that of Stalin in terms of analyses focusing upon the political significance of the cult and de-emphasising the personal aspect.
See for example, Richard H. Solomon, Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture ( Berkeley, 1971 ). Unfortunately study of the Stalin cult has been hindered by the extensive range of meaning attached to the term ‘personality cult’ in Soviet writing, a meaning which extended beyond the projected public image of Stalin to embrace all of his misdeeds, and acceptance of this by Western scholars.
There were some earlier isolated instances of the excessive laudation of Mao. Jerome Ch’en (ed.), Mao ( Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1969 ) p. 20.
The political influence of this group on party policy had effectively disappeared by 1939, although some members of the group retained office long after the cheng feng campaign was completed. See, for example, the entries for Ch’en Shao-yu and Cheng Wen-t’ien in Donald W. Klein and Anne B. Clarke, Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism 1921–1965 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) pp. 127–34 and 61–7.
Mao Tse-tung, ‘The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War’, Selected Works (Peking, 1967) vol. II, p. 209.
Most of these documents are reproduced in Boyd Compton, Mao’s China. Party Reform Documents, 1942–44 (Seattle, 1966).
On authorship, see Mark Selden, ‘The Yenan Legacy: The Mass Line’, A. Doak Barnett (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle, 1969 ) p. 109.
Noriyuki Tokuda, ‘Yenan Rectification Movement: Mao Tse-tung’s Big Push Toward Charismatic Leadership During 1941–1942’, The Developing Economics ix (1971)94–5.
Liu Shao-ch’i, On the Party (Peking, 1950) p. 157.
See an early discussion of this in regard to Stalin in the collection of articles in Problems of Communism II (1953)3–4. For Mao see William F. Dorrill, ‘Transfer of Legitimacy in the Chinese Communist Party: Origins of the Maoist Myth’, John Wilson Lewis (ed.), Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (London, 1970) pp. 69–113.
L. Kaganovich, Stalin is Leading Us to the Victory of Communism (Moscow, 1950) p. 6.
This is reprinted in Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (London, 1950) vol. Iv, pp. 171–218. This has been omitted from the most recent edition of Mao’s works published in Peking.
N. Shvernik, Comrade STALIN - the Continuer of LENIN’s Great Work (Moscow, 1950) pp. 3–4.
I have analysed this process in regard to Stalin, ‘Political Myth and Stalin’s Search for Authority in the Party’, in T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (London, 1980 ).
Cited in Harry G. Shaffer (ed.), The Soviet System in Theory and Practice, Selected Western and Soviet Views (New York, 1965) p. 84.
For critiques of the concept and its utility, see inter alia K. J. Ratnam, ‘Charisma and Political Leadership’, Political Studies, xii (1964)341–54
and Carl J. Friedrich, ‘Political Leadership and the Problem of the Charismatic Power’, Journal of Politics 23 (1961)3–24.
According to Weber, ‘What is alone important is how the individual is actually regarded by those subject to charismatic authority, by his “followers” or “disciples”.’ Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Guenther Roth & Claus Wittich (eds)) (New York, 1968) vol. 1, p. 242, and ‘The term “charisma” shall be understood to refer to an extraordinary quality of a person regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed.’ Max Weber, ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’, H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958) p. 295. It is the failure to understand the crucial nature of the followers’ perceptions which causes some to deny that leader cults can constitute an instance of charisma.
For example, see Robert C. Tucker, ‘The Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, Daedalus 97 (1968)740
and Raymond A. Bauer, ‘The Pseudo-Charismatic Leader in Soviet Society’, Problems of Communism II, 3–4, (1953)11–14). Such a position fails to realise that regardless of how followers’ perceptions are established, the existence of those perceptions reflects the presence of a charismatic relationship. Similarly, even if a cult does not lead to the development of a true charismatic tie between the principal of the cult and his potential followers, this does not invalidate the interpretation of the cult as an attempt to establish such a relationship. Weber approaches this question in his discussion of the ‘routinization of charisma’. Economy and Society vol. 1, pp. 246–54 and vol. iii, pp. 1121–48.
For a discussion of the image projected by charismatic leaders, see Ann Ruth Willner and Dorothy Willner, ‘The Rise and Role of Charismatic Leaders’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 358 (1965) pp. 81–84.
The image of the relationship between leader and followers projected through both leader cults at this time is a perfect profile of the sort of relationship Weber believed would exist between the charismatic leader and his following. In the words of one student of the concept, ‘Such emotions — devotion, awe, reverence, and, above all, blind faith —are what the charismatic leader generates in his followerschrw… this relationship involves abdication of choice and of judgment by followers and the surrender of the mandate to choose and judge to the leader’. Ann Ruth Willner, Charismatic Political Leadership. A Theory, Research Monograph, no. 32 ( Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1968 ), p. 6.
Comments on the roles of Stalin and Mao in fostering the early development of their cults will be found in, respectively, Robert C. Tucker, ‘The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult’, American Historical Review 84 (1979)347–66
and Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, 1967) p. 233.
This could also be an important function of a leader cult when the transformative period of a regime’s life has ended and it enters the ‘post-mobilization phase’. (The concept comes from Richard Lowenthal, ‘The Ruling Party in a Mature Society’, Mark G. Field (ed.), Social Consequences of Modernization in Communist Societies (Baltimore, 1976) p. 81. With a ‘revolution from above’ having set the country on firm socialist foundations and determined its future course of development, the continued political monopoly of the regime becomes more difficult to justify. A leader cult may be useful in this situation by embodying a direct link with the legitimising myth of the system and a contemporary reaffirmation and demonstration of the relevance of the ideological principles at the heart of the regime’s perception of itself.
See the chapters by Stephen White and Jack Gray in Archie Brown and Jack Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (London, 1977).
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© 1982 T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Fehér
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Gill, G. (1982). Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle: Individual Legitimacy in Marxist—Leninist Systems. In: Rigby, T.H., Fehér, F. (eds) Political Legitimation in Communist States. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05981-2_6
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