The Soviet Leader Cult: Reflections on the Structure of Leadership in the Soviet Union

Abstract

A common feature of authoritarian regimes throughout history has been the creation of an elaborate mystique around the leader. This has consisted, in general terms, of the building up of the leader into a figure of superhuman dimensions dwarfing all the lesser mortals who surround him. Although such a cult often pandered to and was inflated by the egoism of its principal, its presence across millennia and cultural differences suggests a systemic basis for its development. Leader cults have rarely been the result simply of a desire for personal glorification or public worship on the part of a leader, significant though such factors may be in any particular instance, but have resulted in large part from structural features of the political system in question. The Soviet political system is clearly relevant in this regard, having been characterized by the existence of exaggerated cults of the leader for much of its sixty-two-year history. By analysing two of these cults, those of Stalin and Brezhnev as embodied in the images of the two leaders projected through the party press, it will be possible to isolate those structural aspects of the Soviet political system which encourage the emergence and growth of a leader cult.