"When we talk about the repressions, we avoid looking at one obvious, but unpleasant, fact. The repressions of 1937-38 to a great extent were created not by state totalitarianism, but by a profound _democracy_. But not a democracy of civil society of rational individuals, but the archaic one of the peasant commune. This is an enormous dark force, and when it is allowed to carry out its will, innocent heads roll. For it is easy for the peasant commune to believe in plots and the secret power of aliens, of "enemies of the people." When such hatred, possessing the power of an epidemic, rules the peasant commune, every witch will burn. And the Russian peasant commune is not crueler in this, than, for example, that of Western Europe -- it simply occured there earlier than it did among us."
[WS:] This is one of those observations that really get to the very essence of things. Absolutely right on the target, but also absolutely obvious to anyone with a brain. In fact, how can a rational person imagine that one man can keep two hundred million people under his thumb against their will - as the western propaganda wants us to believe?
A similar observation was made by Michael Kennedy (_Professionals, Power and Solidarity_) who claimed that contrary to popular myths, the communist regime received substantial public support. Only certain segments of the intelligentsia vocally opposed it.
Following this thread I argue (_Civil Society and the Professions in Eastern Europe_) that the relationship between the regime and the masses was dialectical in the Marxist sense. Initially, the organizational forms created by the state socialist regime facilitated occupational advancement and civic engagement of the "masses" (mostly semi-literate peasants), but as that advancement and engagement grew, the organizational forms that initially promoted it became the integument of the future development - integument that "burst asunder" as the demand for a different kind of democracy - the democracy of civil society, and civic engagement of rational individuals - grew.
I think that this development from "democracy in the archaic sense" - or "mob rule" or "tyranny of the majority" or populism -which is the back bone of all forms of dictatorship - to the democracy of civil society and rational individuals in Eastern Europe is probably one of the most clear examples of Marx's dialectics. From that point of view, Stalin was a democrat at one point of historical development, and a bloody tyrant at some later point.
I think it also explains why the infatuation with populism among the US lefties is viewed with scorn and derision by most Eastern European intellectuals. The naiveté of the US left was often the butt of "yank jokes" when I lived on the other side of the iron curtain. This probably explains why it was the "hard-nosed" Thatcher who became the Anglo-Saxon hero of Eastern European intellectuals after the "velvet revolution" - whereas the US political thought was largely ignored.
Wojtek