Personal dominance and the collective principle

individual legitimacy in Marxist—Leninist systems

Graeme Gill

pp. 94-110

in: T. H. Rigby, Ferenc Fehér (eds), Political legitimation in communist states, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982

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.

Cited authors

Marx Karl