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The problem with which this investigation is concerned addresses the question of the proper role of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Soviet state. The political leadership has two alternatives in seeking a remedy to this civil-military question. They may either control the military establishment by granting strict professional autonomy or by integrating the armed forces into the civil structure.

This thesis examines a little studied aspect of the Soviet Union’s history, namely the activities of the mass membership of the Communist Party during the interwar period, specifically 1926-1941. Based on extensive research in central and regional party archives, it revisits a number of specialised scholarly debates by offering an account of key processes and events of the period, including rapid industrialisation and mass repression, from the viewpoint of rank-and-file communists, the group of people who had chosen to profess active support for the regime without however acquiring positions of political power. The account provided is in the form of an in-depth case study of the party organisation of the Red Putilov – later Kirov – machine-building plant in the city of Leningrad, followed by a shorter study of communist activism in another major Leningrad institution, the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet. It is shown that all major political initiatives of the leadership generated intense political activity at the bottom levels of the party hierarchy, as the thousands of rank-and-file members interpreted and acted on central directives in ways that were consistently in line with their and their colleagues’ interests. As these interests were hardly ever in harmony with those of the corresponding level of the administrative state apparatus, the result was a nearly permanent state of tension between the executive and political branches of the Soviet party-state at the grassroots level. The main argument offered is that ultimately, the rank-and-file organisations of the communist party were an extremely important but contradictory element of the Soviet Union’s political system, being a reliable constituency of grassroots support for the regime while at the same time placing significant limits on the ability of state organs to actually implement policy. This thesis therefore challenges interpretations of Soviet state-society relations based on binary narratives of repression from above and resistance from below. It identifies instead an element of the Soviet system where the line between society and the state became blurred, and grassroots agency became possible on the basis of a minimum level of active support for the regime. It is further argued that the ability of the mass membership to influence the outcome of leadership initiatives was predicated on the Marxist-Leninist ideological underpinnings of most major policies. In this way, this thesis also contributes to the recent literature on the role of ideology in the Soviet system. The concluding chapter considers the value of the overall findings of this thesis for the comparative study of 20th century socialist states.

This dissertation examines the survival and expansion strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by focusing on its organization and mobilization activities during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945). I argue that the Communist forces quickly expanded during the wartime not merely because the War provided an opportunity to avoid the Guomingdang (GMD)’s intensive military aggression and legitimately expand itself throughout China. More importantly, it also allowed the CCP to develop a unique political culture with a grasp on local knowledge during the years under investigation. This cultural climate worked to rejuvenate itself through organizational consolidation and the rebuilding of political identity. Together, these factors accounted for the dramatic expansion of the CCP’s membership and military forces, which prepared the Party for its takeover of the country after the Japanese surrender. The main body of this dissertation is composed of five thematic chapters. Chapter two explores the CCP’s penetration into local society through mass resistance associations and political renovation of existing power structures. Chapter three investigates Communist propaganda activities, the success of which laid in coordination with the Party’s follow-up organizational arrangements. The next chapter examines the Communist educational institutions as a channel of mass mobilization that further reinforced its penetration into various social groups. Chapter five uses Grain Tax, conscription and mobilization of anti-pacification campaign, all of which required personal sacrifice from the masses, as three instances that exemplified the Party’s controllability over local communities. Finally, chapter six focuses on its strategies to contain undesirable tendencies of local cadres and strengthen ideological consensus within the Party. / text

Organized socialism was conceived and born in Canada during the last decade of the nineteenth century; however the forces which led to this conception can be traced back into the late 1860's. From this time, it is possible to race a fairly intelligible line to the first socialist organizations of the 1890's. [...]

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

M.A. (Political Science) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The dissertation analyses the dynamics of the non-democratic Czechoslovak regime during the era of so-called "normalisation". Methodologically, this is a "heuristic case study", an inductive inquiry oriented on finding a new hypothesis, focused on theory building, not theory confirming. Conceptually, it follows a "pluralistic" framework, primarily using Skilling's typology of Soviet-type authoritarianism. The aim of this thesis is to answer the following question: "What mechanism in the Soviet-type authoritarian structure had to change to induce "pluralization" of the regime?" The dissertation is divided into three parts: First, I present a description of an intellectual context of the emergence of "pluralism" in the field of so called "Sovietology". Notably, I focus on the preconditions of the "rise and fall" of totalitarian theory. Employing the "building-block technique", I consider "consultative authoritarianism" in the GDR to formulate a preliminary hypothesis on the connection between degrees of pluralism and the way leaders of the Party exercised cadre policy. The second section, derived from archival research, primarily concentrates on exploring the changes in the nomenklatura system in 1960s and early 1970s. In the third, concluding section, I formulate new hypothesis and present an explanatory...

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