Editing Totalitarianism (section)

====Totalitarian model as an official policy====
In the 1950s, the political scientist [[Carl Joachim Friedrich]] said that [[Communist state]]s, such as [[USSR|Soviet Russia]] and [[China|Red China]], were countries which were systematically controlled by a supreme leader who used the five features of the ''totalitarian model'' of government: (i) an official [[dominant ideology]] that includes a [[cult of personality]] about the leader, (ii) control of all civil and military weapons, (iii) control of the public and the private [[mass media|mass communications media]], (iv) the use of [[state terrorism]] to police the populace, and (v) a political party of mass membership who perpetually re-elect The Leader.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=3–4 |isbn=978-1139446631 |quote=In 1953, Carl Friedrich characterised totalitarian systems in terms of five points: an official ideology, control of weapons and of media, use of terror, and a single mass party, 'usually under a single leader.' There was, of course, an assumption that the leader was critical to the workings of totalitarianism: at the apex of a monolithic, centralised, and hierarchical system, it was he who issued the orders which were fulfilled, unquestioningly, by his subordinates.}}</ref>

In the 1960s, the revisionist Kremlinologists researched the organisations and they also studied the policies of the relatively autonomous [[bureaucracy|bureaucracies]] that influenced the crafting of high-level policy for governing Soviet society in the USSR.<ref name="Davies & Harris 2005, pp. 4–5">{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Sarah |last2=Harris |first2=James |year=2005 |chapter=Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas |title=Stalin: A New History |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=4–5 |isbn=978-1139446631 |quote=Tucker's work stressed the absolute nature of Stalin's power, an assumption which was, increasingly, challenged by later revisionist historians. In his ''Origins of the Great Purges'', Arch Getty argued that the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted to a considerable extent in responding, on an ''ad hoc'' basis, to political crises as they arose. Getty's work was influenced by political [the] science of the 1960s onwards, which, in a critique of the totalitarian model, began to consider the possibility that relatively autonomous bureaucratic institutions might have had some influence on policy-making at the highest level.}}</ref> Revisionist Kremlinologists, such as [[J. Arch Getty]] and [[Lynne Viola]], transcended the interpretational limitations of the totalitarian model by ''recognising'' and ''reporting'' that the Soviet government, the communist party, and the civil society of the USSR had greatly changed upon the death of Stalin. The revisionist [[social history]] indicated that the [[sociology|social forces]] of Soviet society had compelled the Government of the USSR to adjust [[public policy]] to the actual [[political economy]] of a Soviet society composed of pre–War and post–War generations of people with different perceptions of the utility of [[Communist economics]] for all the Russias.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lenoe |first=Matt |date=June 2002|title=Did Stalin Kill Kirov and Does It Matter?|journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=352–380 |doi=10.1086/343411 |issn=0022-2801 |s2cid=142829949}}</ref> Hence, Russian modern history had outdated the ''totalitarian model'' that was the post–[[Stalinism|Stalinist]] perception of the police-state USSR of the 1950s.<ref name="Zimmerman 1980">{{cite journal|last=Zimmerman|first=William|date=September 1980|title=Review: How the Soviet Union is Governed|publisher=Cambridge University Press|journal=Slavic Review|volume=39|issue=3|pages=482–486|doi=10.2307/2497167|jstor=2497167}}</ref>