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Stalin the Charismatic Leader?: Explaining the‘Cult of Personality’ as a Legitimation Technique

CAROL STRONGa∗ and MATT KILLINGSWORTHb∗∗

aUniversity of Arkansas at Monticello; bUniversity of Tasmania

ABSTRACT This article reassesses Stalin’s attempts to construct legitimacy through the devel-opment of a ‘cult of personality’, built through an overt co-option of the charismatic authoritygenerated by Lenin’s revolutionary leadership. While seemingly counterintuitive, it will beargued that Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority offers a constructive tool withwhich to examine Stalin’s attempt to construct legitimacy through the creation of the ‘cult ofpersonality’. Through the application of routinised charisma, Stalin’s attempts at legitimationare not only better understood, but also present further avenues for exploring non-democraticlegitimation techniques through the use of modern media.

Introduction

The upcoming twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union provides us with anideal opportunity to explore one of the more contentious aspects of Soviet rule; politicallegitimacy. At a time when the legitimacy virtues of democratic regimes are loudly espoused(announcements that simultaneously imply the illegitimacy of non-democratic regimes), it isan opportune moment to return to investigate one of the more infamous non-democraticregimes of the twentieth century and reassess attempts to construct Stalin’s legitimacythrough the development of a ‘cult of personality’, a cult built through an overt co-optionof the charismatic authority generated by Lenin’s revolutionary leadership.

While not claiming to provide an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of Stalinism per se,this paper attempts to clarify previously neglected issues in Weber’s concept of charismaticauthority and thereby create a new, more holistic tool with which to analyse leaders such asStalin from a new perspective. More importantly, it provides the foundation from which tofind more objective ways to assess the popular appeal of more contemporary examples ofnon-democratic leaders who have used/instituted a ‘cult of personality’ around theirleadership in order to legitimate their rule.

Two claims are made here. Firstly, we argue that charismatic authority need not only beassociated with the ‘charismatic leader’; rather, it can be repurposed to support an individ-ual not readily associated with various forms of charisma. Secondly, following from theinitial claim, it will be argued that Stalin’s rule, despite claims to the contrary, can beunderstood within Weber’s charisma legitimation type.

∗Email: [email protected]∗∗Email: [email protected]

Politics, Religion & IdeologyVol. 12, No. 4, 391–411, December 2011

ISSN 2156-7689 Print/ISSN 2156-7697 Online/11/040391-22 # 2011 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2011.624410

To do this, this article will be delivered in three parts. The first discusses the issue oflegitimacy more generally, thereby providing a foundation for the examinations of theways in which leaders attempt to create a sense of legitimacy for a newly established,post-revolutionary government.

The discussion in the second section will then turn to Weber’s tripartite authority typol-ogy, with a particular focus on charismatic authority, which is delivered in two subsections:the first presents an overview of Weber’s charismatic authority type; and in the second, theroutinisation of charisma and the concept of manufactured charisma are introduced, pro-viding the theoretical foundation for the examination of the ‘cult of personality’ as a legit-imation technique.

The third and final part shows how, through an overt co-option of Lenin’s legacy, Stalin‘manufactured’ a charismatic bond with the Soviet people. By highlighting the ways inwhich Stalin manufactured charisma, this article will show how the ‘cult of personality’can be viewed as a legitimation technique using manufactured charisma as a tool.

Legitimacy in the Context of Totalitarian Politics

This article localises the issue of how to address the concept of legitimacy within a tota-litarian context and focuses on the role of the leader.1 It should be made clear from theoutset that the central objective is not to examine legitimacy per se, but to emphasisethe potential for political leaders to generate a sense of legitimacy for the state, andmore importantly to mobilise popular support for the continued legitimacy of the state.Further to this and, considering that the debate concerning legitimacy in Soviet-typeregimes often appears compromised by Cold War, Manichean dichotomies, this article,rather than indulge in the debate centred on the ‘legitimacy status’ of the Soviet Unionunder Stalin, will address the process by which Stalin attempted to legitimate the Sovietstate after the death of Lenin.

Legitimacy is a complex and multi-faceted concept that has different applicationsdepending on the type of system under consideration. It is nevertheless based on certainunderlying principles, with Max Weber’s tripartite classification of authority (or legitimatedomination) often cited as the dominant model for empirical investigations of legitimacy.For Weber, legitimacy is understood as the normative validity of an order resting onwhether or not the actions of individuals are supported by a corresponding belief by thepeople ‘in the existence of a legitimate order’ in a particular system.2 It derives from hisquestion: ‘By what right do some individuals in social systems claim to exercisecommand over others and gain acceptance of their claims and obedience to their directivesfrom those others as their right?’ Weber concludes that the people must view authority as

1A great deal of literature is devoted to discussions on the usefulness of totalitarianism as an analytical tool, some ofit promoting the argument that totalitarianism lost most of its value when it was appropriated as an anti-commu-nist weapon during the Cold War (for example, see K. Mueller, ‘East European Studies, Neo-Totalitarianism andSocial Science Theory’ in A. Siegel (ed), The Totalitarian Paradigm After the End of Communism: Towards a Theor-etical Reassessment (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 55–90; and B. Barber and H. Spiro, ‘Counter-Ideological Uses of “Totalitarianism”’, Politics and Society, 1 (1970), pp. 3–21). However, such arguments focus onthe analytical value of the term post-1953. The use of the term here adopts Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezins-ki’s six ‘basic features or traits. . . generally recognised to be common to totalitarian dictatorships’, an approach thatconstituted the most dominant paradigm in studies on Communist systems up to the beginning of the 1960s (seeC.J. Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 2nd ed., (New York, Washington andLondon: Praeger, 1966), p. 22).2Max Weber,; transl. A. R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons The Theory of Social and Economic Organization(London: William Hodge, 1947), p. 113.

392 C. Strong and M. Killingsworth

‘exemplary and binding’, and that the associated ‘rules of the game’ are accepted as valid,whether this acceptance occurs by virtue of tradition, charisma, or a belief in legality.3

Building on Weber’s idea, most definitions of legitimacy emphasise two key points of theidea; the claim to authority and the degree of compliance demanded by such a claim.Hence, as Taros Fatifa points out, legitimacy should be understood as constituting bothan objective and subjective connotation.4 Thus T.H. Rigby, argues that legitimacy is bestunderstood as:

The expectation of political authorities that people will comply with theirdemands. . . based not only on such considerations as the latter’s fear of punish-ment, hope of reward, habit or apathy, but also on the notion that they havethe right to make such demands. This notion both inheres, explicitly or implicitly,in the claims of the authorities, and is reciprocated, to a greater or lesser extent, inthe minds of those whom compliance is demanded.5

Rigby elaborates on notions of order and on the nature of the relationship between rulersand ruled. This second part is especially important; it is what distinguishes naked forcefrom authority. This is essentially how Weber understood legitimacy, as denoting thedifference between authority and power, ‘where authority is understood as legitimately exer-cised power’.6

However, while applied with (relatively little) controversy to liberal democracies, thereare those who argue that ‘the category of legitimacy is of little relevance’ when studyingthe politics of the Communist world.7 Such arguments are often premised on the ideathat political power was established and maintained by means of terror and total socialcontrol.8 Even those analysts, including Stephen White, who attributed at least basiclevels of legitimacy to the Soviet systems, were less than enthusiastic about it. Whitecouples the legitimacy in Soviet systems with a prolonged period of uncontested publicsupport; he does not associate it with genuine grassroots support.9 The idea presented isthat whatever traces of legitimacy managed to emerge were based on the premise thatroutine activities can be translated over time into new social traditions.

3Max Weber, transl. H.P. Secher Basic Concepts in Sociology (New York: The Citadel Press, 1962), pp. 71–72.4Fatos Tarifa, ‘The Quest for Legitimacy and the Withering Away of Utopia’, Social Forces, 76:2 (1997),pp. 437–473 (p. 439).5T.H. Rigby, ‘Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-organisational Systems’ in T.H.Rigby and F. Feher (eds), Political Legitimation in Communist States (London: MacMillan, 1982), p. 1.6Tarifa, p. 440; emphasis added.7Mark Wright, ‘Ideology and Power in the Czechoslovak Political System’ in P. G. Lewis (ed), Eastern Europe: Pol-itical Crisis and Legitimation (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1984), p. 111.8Often these critics upheld those sections of Machiavellian theory that create the impression that certain leadershave the potential to rule by coercion and terror tactics alone. Paradoxically, this approach is not fully supportedby Machiavelli, who in contrast to the misinformed conclusion that to be ‘Machiavellian’ was to employ raw (andoften brutal) power, actually worked against such a concept. Machiavelli issues a warning to potential leaders that ifthe choice is made while accumulating political power ‘to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be withoutpity, and without religion’, all virtue and glory is forfeited (Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and The Discourses(New York: The Modern Library, 1950), p. 32). Even here, it is intimated that political leaders must alwayskeep their subjects in mind, if legitimacy was to be retained. Having said this, Machiavelli certainly did notdismiss the use of brute force, instead arguing that ‘it is necessary to order things so that when. . . [the people]no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force’. The implication is that it was safer for a prince to behated rather than loved, but only if ‘one of the two has to be wanting’ (Machiavelli, p. 9).9Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1979), pp. 180–188; seealso Carol Strong, The Role of Charismatic Leadership in Ending the Cold War: The Presidencies of Boris Yeltsin,Vaclav Havel and Helmut Kohl (New York: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2009), pp. 59–62.

Stalin the Charismatic Leader? 393

Despite this, one is still moved to ask, as Jan Pakulski does, how one can explain ‘appar-ent mass compliance and stability in these societies’?10 The actions undertaken by bothLenin and Stalin not only demonstrate an appreciation of the need to secure at least alimited level of sustained legitimacy if their power was to become sustainable, but theiractions also serve to justify the focus placed here on the leader. At a deeper theoreticallevel, there is further evidence that the leader is critical to the legitimation processwithin totalitarian systems. Whereas legitimacy is accomplished in liberal democraciesunder the auspices of the ‘rule of law’ and through such channels as ‘broadening thescope of government intervention, increased regulation and bureaucratisation’,11 thesame opportunities do not exist in totalitarian systems; hence the need to explore moreobjective ways to assess the popular appeal of non-democratic leaders who have used/instituted a ‘cult of personality’ around their leadership in order to legitimate their rule.

Max Weber, Charismatic Authority and its Application to Soviet Politics

In Economy and Society, Max Weber outlines three ideal types of authority: legal-rational,traditional, and charismatic, and then elaborates on these, assigning specific characteristicsto each in an attempt to establish their individual legitimacy. The focus of this article is onthe latter, charismatic authority, but even more specifically on Weber’s conception of‘routinised charisma’, whereby spontaneous forms of charismatic authority are trans-formed into more stabilised forms in an attempt to sustain longer-term legitimacy thanrevolutionary and/or transitional periods afford. To clarify the inherent differencesbetween the two types of charisma, the Weberian conception of pure charismatic authoritywill be briefly examined first, before proceeding to its ‘manufactured’ forms.

Weber designates charismatic authority as unique and focused on the individual in that itis ‘qualitatively delimited from within’ and not based on an external order.12 In contradis-tinction to leaders chosen because of family ties or economic prowess, the charismaticphenomenon thus rests on the ‘devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplarycharacter of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed’ by aparticular person.13 Weber further specifies that charismatic authority is attributed to indi-viduals who have abilities ‘believed to be supernatural (and) not accessible to everybody’.14

Even acknowledging the differentiation between manifestations of leadership andauthority, charismatic authority clearly diverges from other forms of authority preciselybecause the leader’s influence emanates not from the position obtained, but from asense of ‘personal idiosyncratic power’.15 As a result, the leader must be emphasised as akey aspect of the charismatic legitimation process.

Exploring this further, Weber dictates that:

. . .The power of charisma rests upon the belief [of the people] in revelation andheroes, upon the conviction that certain manifestations – whether. . .religious,ethical, artistic, scientific, political, or other kind – are important and valuable.16

10Jan Pakulski, ‘East European Revolutions and “Legitimacy Crisis”’, in Janina Frentzel- Zagorska (ed), From aOne-Party State to Democracy: Transition in Eastern Europe (Amsterdam-Atlanta, Ga.): Rodopi, 1993), p. 45.11Aleksandar Pavkovic, Slobodan Jovanovic: An Unsentimental Approach to Politics (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1993), p. 122.12Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 3, p. 1113.13Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1, pp. 215, 241–242.14Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1, pp. 241–242.15Jay Conger & Rabindra Kanungo, Charismatic Leadership in Organisations (Thousand Oaks, CA.; London: SagePublications, 1998), p. 89; see also Strong, pp. 128–130.16Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 3, p. 1116.


There are two points to be taken from this. Reinhard Bendix, for example, concludes that ifa leader derives his/her authority through charismatic means/charisma, it is immaterialwhether they are ‘prophets and heroes, magicians and demagogues, doctors and quacks,leaders of mobs or orchestras of robber bands’. Whether they are criminals or saints,people will follow these individuals because of their role in society, as witnessed by thefact that ‘both very evil and very good men. . . [have] exercised domination throughtheir extraordinary gifts of mind and body’.17

In addition, the use of the word ‘believes’ can be taken to imply that charismatic auth-ority can only emerge and be legitimated, if a leader gains committed followers. If thisinterpretation is accepted, then an association with charismatic authority is made not bythe leader’s ability to demonstrate his/her power in isolation, but through the requisitefaith of the people (Weber designates them as disciples) ‘in that power, whatever thepower is conceived to be’.18 Again the possibility of applying the concept to more thanone type of leader is provided, but also the implication that such leaders only retaincharismatic authority for the time that the people recognise his/her political worth. Asconcluded by Weber, if (and when) it is decided that the chosen leader can no longerfulfil his/her promises, the charismatic mission of that particular leader abruptly endsand the associated authority disappears.19 In this context, charismatic authority is notclassified as a quality to be possessed by an individual leader, but is instead a status thatis freely given (or taken as the case may be) according to the will of the people. Thus,as elaborated on by Strong, charismatic authority is transitory, and is best understoodas ‘unpredictable, but more importantly as an inherently volatile and unsettled phenom-enon, primarily because it depends on the interaction of the leader with his/herfollowers’.20

Having said this, it cannot be assumed that this type of authority is generated and/orgained by accident, but (more often than not) through the intentional repurposing ofthe ensuing transformational political environment. This is based on the Weberian tenetthat ‘genuine’ charismatic leaders do not wait to be recognised by their followers, but that:

. . .The genuine prophet, like the genuine military leader and every true leader inthis sense, preaches, creates, or demands new obligations – most typically, byvirtue of revelation, oracle, inspiration, or of his own will, which are recognisedby the members of the religious, military, or party group because they comefrom such a source. Recognition is a duty.21

Bringing these two ideas together, while transformational and/or revolutionary leadersrarely create the demand for change, the successful generation of charismatic authorityrequires that the leader act in such a way that the people respond to his/her leadership,but more importantly believe that he/she was indeed responsible for the ensuing eventsand is thereby the natural candidate for leadership. For Lepsius, there comes apoint where a group of people, as they try to make sense of a chaotic situation, beginto look desperately for an individual with whom they can forge a relationship of‘supreme trust’,because they see them as the personification of the change process

17Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber, an intellectual portrait (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1962), pp. 299–300;see also Strong, pp. 79–83.18Bendix, p. 301.19Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 3, pp. 1113–1116.20Strong, pp. 204–207.21Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, pp. 243–244.


itself.22 The relationship forged between the emergent leader and his/her followers is thenperpetuated until such a time that the crisis period has ended and the people are ready for areturn to normalcy.

As beneficial as this is during the transitional period, however, there are serious impli-cations for the normalisation of charismatic authority. When legitimacy is based solelyon ideological objectives, for example, the leader’s authority becomes limited by the recur-rent need to reassure the people that the professed goals of the revolutionary period remainobtainable, whatever obstacles emerge. Machiavelli substantiates this through his obser-vation that while groups often accept change readily, at least in the beginning, it is oftendifficult to sustain an adequate level of popular support, once the hardships of everydaylife return.23

According to Weberian theory, if ideological perspectives are perpetuated into the post-transitional phase without having been altered to reflect the changed political atmosphere,the charismatic message of the revolutionary period can easily be reduced to ‘dogma, doc-trine, theory, regalement, law or petrified tradition’, regardless of the best efforts to retainthe purity of the professed ideals. Moreover, if this happens, whatever traces of legitimacyhappen to survive the initial transitional period are extremely tenuous, with the excitementof radical change suffering ‘a slow death by suffocation under the weight of [the] materialinterests’ associated with the post-transitional period.24 According to this logic, charismaticauthority dissipates along with the popular support for revolution or transformationalchange and the associated leader. In this context, and in order to maintain viable,charismatic authority must therefore be transformed (or to use Weberian terminology,routinised) into other more stable forms of authority that better adhere to the need forstability and predictability associated with a consolidated regime.

Charismatic Authority, Routinised

Despite the transitory nature of charismatic authority, and the difficulty of prolonging itseffect, Weberian theory provides the foundation for traces of charisma to survive the trans-formational period and subsequently become part of the traditional framework of society.While not prominent in his work, Weber postulates that the potential exists for charisma tobe ‘transmitted by ritual means from one bearer to another’ through a process of routinisa-tion and thereby become associated with a particular political position and/or office, not aparticular individual.25 Consider, for example, the Weberian tenet that:

. . .When the tide that lifted a charismatically led group out of everyday life flowsback into the channels of workaday routines, at least the ‘pure’ form of charis-matic domination will wane and turn into an institution.26

Whereas the leader was previously the primary point of emphasis for charismatic authority,it can be shifted from the individual and redirected to the ‘acquired qualities and to the

22M. Rainer Lepsius, ‘Charismatic Leadership: Max Weber’s Model and its Applicability to the Rule of Hitler’ inCarl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici (eds) Changing Conceptions of Leadership (New York: Springer-Verlag,1986), pp. 53–66; see also Strong, pp. 114–120.23Machiavelli, p.22.24Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, pp. 1120–1122.25Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1, pp. 246–249; see also Wolfgang Schluchter,; transl. Neil Solomon Rational-ism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of CaliforniaPress, 1989), pp. 230–239; and Strong, pp. 114–120.26Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1121.


effectiveness of the ritual acts’ inherent to the office assumed.27 In this way, authority istransferred from the leader into the newly established institutional framework of thenew regime, where it must stay, if the system is to remain stable and viable.

However, while signalling a diminishing importance of the individual and individualactions, it should not be assumed that the initial bond between the leader and his/her fol-lowers is broken. Charismatic authority is instead no longer the dominant mode in whichthe leader garners his legitimacy,28 as charisma is radically transformed by the powers oftradition and/or of rational socialisation, and thereby incorporated into the permanentpolitical structure and/or traditions of a particular community.29 This returns to theidea that a sense of legitimacy must be associated with all political systems if the insti-tutional framework is to assume a sustainable level of effectiveness and efficacy. Withoutit, the people would have to be perpetually subdued through the use of violence, whichis brittle and will over the longer-term breed instability and rebellion among the citizensof a post-transformational society.

Weber refers to this process as the ‘routinisation of charisma’.30 While pure charisma isdesignated as highly personalised, Weber appreciates that historically, charisma has alsoexisted as a ‘depersonalised’ quality once effectively combined with other (more stable)forms of authority. In Weber’s view, one is justified in speaking of impersonal charismaas long as:

. . .The characteristics of an extraordinary quality are preserved, which is notaccessible to everyone and which in principle possesses pre-eminence as overthe endowment of those who are subject to charismatic rule.31

With this, the antagonistic interaction of charisma and tradition and/or legal-rationalism istransformed such that they fuse into variable forms of ‘new’ traditionalism driven by char-ismatic appeal.32 In what Weber terms as ‘institutional charisma’, ‘hereditary charisma’, oralternatively the ‘charisma of office’, charisma is transformed from its original radicalnature, as outlined above, into a more stable form of domination33 and is thereby effectivelymechanised as a ‘mere component of a concrete historical structure’.34

Applying this concept to post-revolutionary situations specifically, pure charisma, whiledynamic and extraordinary during periods of radical change, if it survives the revolutionaryperiod at all, becomes routinised, or alternatively de-radicalised once the transformationalcycle is completed. To outline a generalised process, an initial sense of systemic legitimacy ispredominantly secured based on the residual enthusiasm of the revolutionary period itself.However, as the economic concerns of everyday life return to society, especially if ‘quantifi-able success’ is not achieved in what the people deem to be an appropriate amount of time,

27Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1, p. 248.28This is further emphasized when Weber writes ‘If this [pure charismatic authority] is not to remain a purelytransitory phenomenon, but to take on the character of a permanent relationship. . .it is necessary for the characterof charismatic authority to become radically changed. . .It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalizedor rationalised, or a combination of both’ (Weber, Economy and Society vol.3, p. 1222).29Max Weber, ‘The Meaning of Discipline’ in; transl. Hans Gerth and Charles Wright-Mills From Max Weber:Essays in Sociology (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 253.30Weber, Economy and Society, vol.1, pp. 246–254.31Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1121.32Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1122.33Joseph Bensman and Michael Givant, ‘Charisma and Modernity: The Use and Abuse of a Concept’, SocialResearch, Winter (1975), pp. 570–615 (p. 580).34Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1121. See also Bensman and Givant, p. 580.


support for the new leadership inevitably becomes strained and the potential for populardiscontent emerges.35 Under these circumstances, legitimacy becomes tenuous andrequires immediate attention, if stability is to be sustained.

To avoid this scenario, while it can happen that legitimacy will naturally develop,general practice requires the formulation and introduction of an official legitimationprocess by the new leaders. This was particularly true in the case of the former SovietUnion through the construction of a ‘cult of personality’ firstly around Lenin, thenaround Stalin. Hence, while the application of ‘routinised’ charisma appears, at firstglance, to be almost an afterthought, it should be explored as an important qualificationin the Weberian text. It moreover prompts a closer examination of whether or not char-isma can be harnessed and used as part of a political technique utilised as a key vehicle toprolong the life of a stagnating system, or alternatively the consolidation of a post-revolutionary regime.

The potential applications of manufactured charismatic authority

Moving from the discussion of charismatic authority and its routinisation, the focus nowmoves to exactly how this process works in practice and more specifically, how one form oflegitimacy could be sustained through the application of another manufactured form; inthis case, it is the use of charisma as a legitimating tactic for long-term legitimacy forStalin. The discussion is then guided by the Weberian tenet that charismatic authorityhas the ability to be ‘transferred through artificial means’,36 as expanded upon by the the-ories of Ronald Glassman.37

When reading Weber’s theory on routinised charisma, it would appear that the normal-isation of charisma, or more specifically the transformation of charismatic authority to thecharisma of office (or one of the other forms), could only occur through a spontaneousdevelopment. But just as charismatic authority is rarely applied to a leader who has not pre-pared for leadership in one form or another, whether through formal or informal channels,the normalisation process of charisma is often a co-opted, or even a manufactured process.

Since the advent of mass communication, the allure of charismatic leadership and/orauthority remains as strong as ever, in particular because it is the only form of legitimacythat ‘combines massive usurpation with total consent giving’. It is therefore not surprisingthat this has translated into intentional attempts to manufacture charisma in such a way asto create and/or institutionalise permanent leadership roles associated with charismathrough the use of the media tools ranging from the newspaper to, more recently, the Inter-net.38 For Ronald Glassman, this argument follows logically from the idea that the relation-ship between leaders and followers has always, to a certain degree, been manufactured.39

However, while the symbols of legitimation in the past might have been magic symbols,

35Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1120; see also Strong, pp. 114–120.36Weber, Economy and Society, vol.3, p. 1139.37This debate is further inspired by Habermas, who questions whether or not it is possible to create, re-enforce, oreven replace a sense of legitimacy in society once it has been compromised. In accordance with his conclusion thatstagnated or fragile forms of legitimation can indeed be re-invigorated (Jurgen Habermas in William Outhwaite(ed), Habermas Reader (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.,1996), pp. 58, 261).38Ronald Glassman, ‘Legitimacy and Manufactured Charisma’, Social Research, Winter 1975, pp. 615–636 (p.624).While historically disparate from this article, it could be argued that contemporary forms of mass media, in par-ticular the scope of the Internet, brings the people closer to their leaders, or at least allow it to appear that way,rather than moving them farther apart.39Glassman, p. 618.


animal skins, and carved objects, the tools used today are more sophisticated and includenewspapers, magazines, and perhaps most significantly, radio, television, and film.

Glassman expands on this when he argues:

. . .Newspapers, magazines and printed posters create an atmosphere in which thepolitical leader seems ever-present and larger than life. Since the charismaticrelationship functions best when the group feels a personal, trusting, infantilizingbond with the leader, the constant presence – in bright images – helps manufac-ture such leader-led relationships.40

The potential for manufactured charisma, Glassman concludes, has been created in con-temporary politics, especially as the charisma of a leader is now often consolidated or com-promised by the associated media coverage and presentation. A situation has indeeddeveloped where a successful leader must now have just the right combination of goodlooks, oratorical restraint, wit, and style during televised appearances and interviews.41

While these observations apply specifically to the use of television in manufacturing char-ismatic authority, less modern forms of mass communication have been used in the past tomanufacture charismatic authority. Lenin himself acknowledged the potential of using thepress to influence public opinion as early as during the Russian Revolution in 1917. 42

However, just as Weber’s theory of charismatic authority has been questioned in relation tocontemporary politics, so too has the potential relationship between the media and charismaticauthority. For example, focusing on the ‘pure’ nature of the charismatic bond, Joseph Bensmanand Michael Givant argue that any attempt to construct a charismatic relationship in themodern political arena, particularly through the use of modern mass communications,cannot be analysed using Weber’s typology. Indeed, they argue that the charismatic ideal-type is historically limited, and not at all suited to modern politics.43 For Bensman andGivant, the fact that modern politics involves the participation of millions of people meansthat an intimate, personal relationship between the leader and follower can no longer exist.It is argued in this article, by contrast, that such a conclusion is premature, especially as a con-current trend has emerged whereby the mass media has created an environment in which thepeople believe that they are indeed intimately acquainted with those in power.

Somewhat similarly, Karl Loewenstein argues that while:

. . .Democratization has strengthened beyond all expectations the plebiscitarycomponents in the power process. . .at the same time it has decidedly diminishedthe chances for the development and operation of true charisma. . . .The leaderwho shows himself daily. . .is less magical and magnetic than the leader who isnot seen at all, or only rarely on occasions especially favourable to him. Farfrom reinforcing charisma and spreading its magic in a wider context, the massmedia in an open society act as disenchantments. . .It would [thus] appear thatcharisma. . .has become a victim of modern technology.44

40Glassman, p. 630.41Glassman, pp. 630–632; see also Strong, pp. 197–199.42Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Peking: Foreign Languages Press,1975) p. 45.43Bensman and Givant, p.601. This argument is representative of analysts that believe that modern forms of com-munication, and the way they are utilized in modern politics, ‘depersonalize’ the relationship between leader andlead, and hence remove any magic or mysticism that underpins the charismatic bond.44Karl Loewenstein,; transl. Richard and Clara Winston Max Weber’s Political Ideas in the perspective of our OwnTime (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966), pp. 84–86.


While Loewenstein’s argument is slightly more persuasive than that made by Bensman andGivant, they both remain flawed since the onus for the charismatic bond lies with the ‘fol-lower’ or ‘disciple’. Hence, if the people respond in the requisite manner, then it is of littleconsequence if the relationship is started or perpetuated through the means of modernmedia.45

Stalin: Manufactured Charisma as a Legitimation Technique

When considering Stalin, two predominant approaches to legitimacy can be discerned.Firstly, in contrast to the utopian perspectives of Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolu-tion’, or even the obscure assurance of a future attainment of communist-inspired equality,Stalin’s policies were increasingly related to the more immediate issues of national interestsand state security.46 Secondly, and of particular interest to the questions at hand here, wasthe creation of Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’. To overcome the problem that a well-formedideological framework had not yet been fully consolidated under Lenin before his death,Stalin’s own political legitimacy was justified in terms of the enduring Bolshevik legacy.With this tactic, Stalin was simultaneously able to combine elements of a new (official)form of Soviet nationalism with traces of traditionalism in order to provide a historicalfoundation for the legitimacy of his leadership.

Directly following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the legitimacy of the newly estab-lished Soviet political system was underpinned by the ‘unwavering faith and singlenessof vision’ projected by the Bolshevik revolutionaries.47 Lenin, in particular, enjoyed aform of popular legitimacy directly related to the ideological zeal of the revolutionaryperiod itself, perpetuated into the post-revolutionary period and projected into hisimage.48 However, while Lenin may have recognised the need to promote his longer-term legitimacy, he was not the one to take this process to its logical conclusion.Whether he was unwilling to abandon his commitment to communism in its entirety,or alternatively if he was not in power long enough to lose his revolutionary appeal,Lenin refrained from fully consolidating his revolutionary appeal into a more stabilisedform of authority.49 It was instead the Party and Stalin, between 1929 and 1953, which pro-moted and utilised this technique. The premise to be explored in the remainder of thispaper is thus whether the creation of a ‘cult of personality’ firstly around Lenin, butlater around Stalin himself, qualifies as a legitimation tactic based on charisma.

Theodore von Laue argues that the primary motivation for the construction of Stalin’scult was to provide a foundation for his claim that he was Lenin’s legitimate heir

45This idea is supported by Anne Ruth Willner, who argues that ‘mass communications media can serve as apowerful means for promoting charismatic appeal; it is doubtful if they can create it where there is little or nobasis for its generation’ (Anne Ruth Willner, Charismatic Political Leadership: A Theory (Centre of InternationalStudies, Princeton University, 1968), p. 14.46Ralph Miliband and Marcel Liebman, ‘Reflections on Anti-Communism’, Socialist Register, 21 (1984), pp. 9–22(p. 14).47John Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, 1918 (London: Macmillan Press, 1938), pp. 16–18.48Heller, p. 47. See also Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia, (Cambridge, MA and London:Harvard University Press, 1997); see also Strong, pp. 163–171.49It is commonly understood that Lenin shunned pubic adulation. Note the following abstract from The Nation;‘Three cities, innumerable villages, collectives, schools, factories, and institutions have been named after (Stalin),and now someone has started a movement to Christen the Turksib the “Stalin Railway”. I have gone back over thenewspapers from 1919 to 1922: Lenin never permitted such antics and he was more popular that Stalin can everhope to be’ (cited in Robert Tucker, ‘The Rise of Stalin s Personality Cult’, The American Historical Review, 84:2(1979), pp. 347–366 (pp. 348–349).


apparent.50 While the association with Lenin in the establishment of the cult is important,the motivation behind the establishment of the cult, as observed by David Brandenburger,is better understood as a ‘desperate attempt to mobilise a society that was too poorly edu-cated to grasp the philosophical tenets of the Party line. . . Party ideologists. . . turned to theStalin cult as a new way of bolstering popular loyalty to the Party and state’.51

Combining traditionalism and charismatic authority, a cult of personality was developedaround Lenin, the founding father of Soviet communism in order to later shift the focus toStalin. While Heller designates Lenin as ‘anything but a charismatic leader’, and furtherargues that his charismatic appeal was only through the co-option of his legacy by his suc-cessors,52 the revolutionary leadership exhibited by Lenin during the Russian Revolutioninspired levels of devotion associated with the manifestation of charismatic authority.53

Again, it is not important whether Lenin or Stalin were charismatic leaders in the pureWeberian sense, but rather that the charismatic aura of Lenin’s revolutionary leadershipcreated a phenomenon strong enough to encourage a widespread commitment to revolu-tionary ideals.54 It moreover provides the foundation for an examination of Stalin’s co-option and/or creation of the Leninist ‘cult of personality’ in the former Soviet Union.

As Nina Tumarkin observes, while ‘the Lenin cult did not survive the tenth anniversaryof his death. . .some individual practises were retained. A number of them were absorbedinto the Stalin cult, converting the traditional mode of revering Lenin into a public venera-tion of Lenin and Stalin together’.55 Indeed, according to Tumarkin, a central tenet of thecult was the portrayal that Stalin and Lenin had always been ‘spiritual brothers, devotedcompanions, the closest friends and colleagues’.56 Stalin, somewhat paradoxically, was sim-ultaneously presented as a pupil of Lenin’s, while also being portrayed as the foremostinterpreter and/or source of post-Lenin communism in the former Soviet Union. At themost fundamental level, Stalin intended to transfer the levels of enthusiasm and supportenjoyed by Lenin as an individual, directly to the system itself and then attribute thisenergy to his own leadership once fully consolidated.

The success of such ‘hero-worship’ might appear to contradict the fundamental tenets ofMarxism-Leninism.57 From another perspective, it is a telling example of Stalin’s awarenessof the cult, if not necessarily his promotion of it, since he was of the opinion that Marxismprovided a theoretical justification of the cult of heroes. Paraphrasing Georgii Plekhanov,Stalin justified the place of the hero-genius thus:

50As concluded by Von Laue, ‘Stalin was the perfect Leninist by more than his own, all too brazenly proclaimedjudgment. His rise to power did not mark, therefore, a Thermidorian reaction, but rather Fructidor, the highsummer of fruition for the most dynamic and emotion-charged element of Bolshevism’ (Von Laue, p. 202).51David Brandenburger, ‘Stalin as Symbol: a case study of the personality cult and its construction’, in Sarah Daviesand James Harris (eds) Stalin: a new history (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005),p. 251.52Agnes Heller, ‘Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-Type Societies’, in T.H. Rigby and F. Feher (eds), PoliticalLegitimation in Communist States (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1982), p. 50.53See Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia, (Cambridge, MA and London: HarvardUniversity Press, 1997), pp. 64–111.54Michael Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 34,191.55Tumarkin, pp. 252–253.56Tumarkin, p. 253.57Barrington Moore, Soviet Politics: The Dilemma of Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950),pp. 228–229. Also see Georg Brunner, ‘Legitimacy Doctrines and Legitimation Procedures in East EuropeanSystems’ in T.H. Rigby and F. Feher (eds) Political Legitimation in Communist States (London: MacMillan,1982), pp. 27–44; and Graeme Gill, ‘Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle: Individual Legitimacyin the Marxist-Leninist Systems’, in T.H. Rigby & F. Feher (eds), Political Legitimation in Communist States,(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), p. 95.


Marxism does not at all deny the role of eminent personalities or the fact thathistory is made by people. . . But, of course, people make history not in such away as any kind of phantasy inspires them to. . . Every new generation findscertain conditions. . . And great people are worth anything only in so far as theyare able to understand these conditions correctly, to understand how to changethem. . . Marxism has never denied the role of heroes. On the contrary, it recog-nises this role as considerable, but with those reservations about which I justspoke.58

Even with this defence of hero-worship, by many accounts, Stalin was a modest man.59

Thus, according to Erik van Ree, Stalin’s understanding of the cult, and thus his promotionof it, while a conscious instrument of his power strategy, was nonetheless framed withinMarxist understanding of the laws of history.60

Exploring this further, efforts to manufacture the cult provide an example of a newleader’s deliberate attempt to forge a common identity with his inspirational predecessorsin the search for political notoriety and/or legitimacy. It is a process that involves anintentional attempt by a leader to weave contemporary values into historic traditions.Palmer compares these efforts to those of a ‘master tailor, skilfully blending newthreads with old into a fabric of unity and purpose’,61 which are in turn successful specifi-cally, to cite Kets de Vries, because they facilitate a sense of ‘continuity between past,present and future’.62 In this way, rather than interpreting social attitudes, to betterincorporate them into traditional norms, the associated leader utilises various forms ofintentionally manipulated social tradition based on his/her vested interests to underpintheir leadership. This is also true of Stalin, as already shown, but what distinguishes thisas a legitimation tactic, as opposed to a genuine manifestation of charismatic authority,is that it was a manufactured application by the Party and Stalin, not something thatspontaneously emerged throughout the population during the course of the transforma-tional period.

Ideally, this process would naturally emerge and be consolidated during a transforma-tional period, as the people view the emergent revolutionary leaders as a personificationof change.63 That said, the same process rarely applies to any successor to follow, whichin turn requires a different tactic from all post-revolutionary leaders, if the zeal of therevolutionary period itself is to be perpetuated. In the case of Stalin, the tactic usedwas the creation of a cult of personality, which in situations where charisma is viewedas an ideal type, and therefore something that can be approached but not achieved,the leader cult can be seen as an attempt to create an authority relationship in whichthe charismatic element is dominant, even if it is not spontaneous. Thus the cult of per-sonality is better termed a legitimation tactic, and not a manifestation of charismaticauthority, by virtue of the fact that it must be purposefully manufactured to fit the

58Cited in Eric van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A study in twentieth-century revolutionary patriotism(London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 162.59See Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York, Columbia UniversityPress, 1989), pp. 817–818; van Ree, pp. 163–168; and Plamper, p. 41.60van Ree, p. 168.61Monte Palmer, Dilemmas of Political Development: An Introduction to the Politics of the Developing Areas (Itasca:F.E. Peacock Publishers Inc., 1985), p. 186.62Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, ‘Origins of Charisma: Ties that Bind the Leader and the Led’, in Jay Conger, Rabin-dra Kanungo and Associates (eds) Charismatic Leadership: The Elusive Factor in Organisational Effectiveness(San Francisco and Oxford: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1988), p. 240.63Strong, pp. 120–122.


rapidly changing post-revolutionary environment, as it is not a natural occurrence withinthe newly transformational society.64

Echoing Heller’s indignation over the application of charisma to Lenin, Carl Friedrichappears to be morally outraged that a concept that originally applied to religious inspirationcould be extended to politics, specifically when applied to leaders that communicate withsecular fervour: ‘. . .Hitler and Jesus Christ, Mussolini and Moses are being identified asessentially engaged in the same kind of work. But are they? It is repellent to even have toask such a question; yet the abuse of the term charismatic makes it vital to do so’.65 As aresult, Friedrich concludes that the Weberian theory – which he presents as ‘basicallyunsound’ in principle – should be omitted from critical discourse, in that it encouragesanalysts to conflate the categories between ‘demagogues, leaders of totalitarian movementsand founders of religions’.66 While not as outraged as Heller and Friedrich, Pakulski andRees also raise doubts about the applicability of Weber’s typology to Soviet leaders.67

Admittedly, at first glance, any attempt to create and maintain Stalin’s authority onthe basis of a charismatic tie with his followers appears counterintuitive, especially asStalin had failed to distinguish himself as the consummate heroic figure in 1917, butmore importantly during the ensuing civil war period. By all accounts, Stalin was moreoverneither representative of an awe-inspiring public speaker, nor was he endowed with animposing physical presence.68 Similarly, his glorified leadership during the ‘Great PatrioticWar’ was achieved in spite of him being viewed as ‘a poor commander, with a weaknessfor. . .underestimating the enemy and overestimating his own forces’. He was moreover‘short-sighted and cruel, careless of losses, little interested in the fate of soldiers or thecommon people’.69 How then, when he fails to have even the most basic charismaticattributes, could it be argued that Stalin could consolidate a form of legitimacy intricatelytied to charismatic appeal and response? The creation of the enduing ‘cult of personality’in the Soviet Union thus requires further analysis.

As discussed above, the cult is best understood as an attempt to mobilise support for thepost-revolutionary, post-Lenin regime. But efforts to legitimise the regime via materialistpropaganda ‘tended to be too abstract to resonate with the USSR’s poorly educated popu-lation’.70 Stalin recognised that orthodox materialism was unpopular on the mass level, asexpressed through his contention that ‘. . .the people do not like Marxist analysis, bigphrases and generalized statements’.71 Thus, according to Brandenburger, ‘Soviet ideolo-gists apparently decided to invest in Stalin-centred propaganda patterned after the Lenincult in order to augment the inscrutable nature of Marxism-Leninism with the celebration

64Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: An Introduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 47; see alsoPlamper, pp. 169–225.65For Friedrich, Hitler represents a ‘very different kind of leadership than the founders. . .of a religion’. To furtherexplore his argument and critique, see Carl Friedrich, ‘Political Leadership and the Problem of Charismatic Power’,The Journal of Politics, 23:1 (1964), pp. 3–24 (p. 15).66Friedrich, p. 16.67Pakulski argues that ‘none of the Weberian types of legitimate authority seem to apply to Soviet-type societies’(Pakulski, ‘Legitimacy and Mass Compliance: Reflections on Max Weber and Soviet-Type Societies’, British Journalof Political Science, 16:1 (1986), pp. 35–56 (p. 45), while Rees suggests that ‘whilst Weber’s typology offers a usefulstarting point for discussing leader cults it is also in some ways misleading’ (E.A. Rees, ‘Leader Cults: Varieties,Preconditions and Functions’ in B. Apor, J. Behrends, P. Jones and E. A. Rees (eds) The Leader Cult in CommunistDictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) pp. 3–29).68Jeffrey Brooks, Thank you Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from the Revolution to the Cold War (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 60.69Roy Medvedev,; transl. E. de Kadt On Stalin and Stalinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 770.70Brandenburger, p. 254.71Cited in Brandenburger, p. 255.


of a tangible, living hero familiar to one and all’.72 The main tool used to achieve this wasthe press. Such was Stalin and the Party’s resolve that by 1929, there was not a single non-Party publication left, nor any private publishing houses that could have served as vehiclesfor opposition views.73 The idea was that he, Stalin, should have ultimate control and influ-ence over whatever media outlet served as a possible source of information on the newSoviet leader, thereby ensuring his status as the ‘chief architect’ of the Soviet Union as itmoved from a post-revolutionary society struggling to consolidate power to a dominantpower on the world stage. Even Pravda was co-opted as the ‘apex of the media’ in orderto showcase Stalin’s evolving image as a world leader, since ‘within its pages no onecould tinker with his image without his approval’.74

Expanding on this idea, Graeme Gill explains that with this development, Pravda ceasedto be a ‘free tribune’ for influential Party members, and instead became a propagandamouthpiece for Stalin. The technique adopted was to highlight the progression of Stalinfrom Lenin’s contemporary to his heroic successor. Between 1929 and the early 1930s,for example, the Soviet media projected an image of Stalin as always closely associatedwith Lenin. Stalin was portrayed in several guises, as the ‘true best pupil of Lenin’, his‘single most reliable aid’, but most importantly as the closest associate and constant com-panion of Lenin.75 This was predictably not to last, as Lenin was slowly moved from theforeground of political commentary and presentation to the background behind Stalin.

Admittedly, the change was gradual. While Lenin continued to appear in fake historicalscenes with Stalin into the early 1930s, he was nevertheless slowly effaced by his successor.The change of emphasis is epitomised by the cover of The Peasant Newspaper in 1933,which shows a silhouette of Lenin in the background while a larger, full figured photographof Stalin dominates the page. Another example of this tactic is found in Pravda on May Day1938, when Stalin was portrayed as leading a huge procession throughout Moscow, withLenin represented by only a poster strategically placed in the background.76 The result isthat while not all participants in the Soviet press may have agreed with what was takingplace, the unique power held by the state over the press ensured that the official viewwould prevail, and the Stalin cult would continue to grow.

Importantly, the cult was not static. As E.A. Rees correctly identifies, Stalin’s cult pro-jected different images at different times: the apprentice revolutionary and Lenin’s pupiland heir; the defender of the state; the prophet, apostle, and teacher; the builder of thenew world; the inspirer of his people, whose bounteous good fortune was to live underhis rule.77 The initial representations of Stalin as the ‘revolutionary heir’ and Lenin’s bestpupil were tactically modified during the collectivisation phase and the initiation of theGreat Terror in an attempt to shift public attention away from the privations of thisperiod towards a more optimistic assessment of the future. For example, during thisperiod, Pravda hosted covers showing Stalin standing in front of Soviet factories appraisingthe good work done by the Soviet citizenry and The Peasant Newspaper featured him visit-ing collective farms talking with the happy farmers in front of their tractors.78 Because thechanged political environment no longer demanded the revolutionary leadership of Lenin,

72Brandenburger, p. 254.73Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism, p. 187.74Paul Wingrove, ‘The Mystery of Stalin’, History Today, 53:3 (2003), pp. 18–20 (p. 18); see also Jeffrey Brooks,’Stalin’s Politics of Obligations’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 4:1 (2003), pp. 47–68 (pp. 49–50).75Graeme Gill, ’The Soviet Leader Cult: Reflections on the Structure of Leadership in the Soviet Union’, BritishJournal of Political Science, 10:2 (1980), pp. 167–186 (p. 168).76Brooks, Thank you Comrade Stalin!, p. 61.77Rees, p. 15; see also Brooks, 2003, pp. 47–50.78Brooks, ‘Stalin’s Politics of Obligations’, p. 50.


but instead needed a protector of Soviet interests, Stalin thus endeavoured to presenthimself as ‘the steady, purposeful hand which, however dreadful the sacrifices, wouldguide the masses on the arduous path to communism’.79

More than this, events such as the Stalin Constitution in 1936, Stalin’s 60th birthday cel-ebrations in 1939 and the release of his official biography in 1940 all helped consolidateStalin’s position as the defender of the state, the single leader with the capacity to bestprotect the USSR from enemies both within and outside the state.80 Then, with the‘Great Patriotic War’, Stalin subsequently presented himself as the consummate warhero and indisputable leader of the USSR. In effect, Stalin took these calculated steps toproject the image that he had ‘single-handedly transformed the country and won theSecond World War’.81 To ensure the acceptance of this new role, he orchestrated amedia reputation for valour by glorifying his achieved status as the architect of a greatvictory in film, art, and literature.82 Of central importance to this was his identificationwith the many successes of the Red Army, but most importantly his leadership in the deci-sive victory over Nazism/Fascism in 1943 in the battle of Stalingrad.

Even some of Stalin’s harshest critics reluctantly acknowledge the mobilising effectStalin’s image had during the war:

Stalin’s name became a sort of symbol existing in the popular mentality indepen-dently from its actual bearer. During the war years, as the Soviet people were bat-tered by unbelievable miseries, the name of Stalin, and the faith in him to somedegree pulled the Soviet people together, giving them hope of victory.83

Obviously, ‘winning’ World War Two only served to strengthen the heroic myth, wherebyStalin was heralded as a prominent world leader within the international community. This,in turn, helped to solidify his reputation at home as the conquering hero and the staunchdefender of Soviet national interests.

Another dimension of the transformation was ideological. Because the communist revo-lution had also claimed moral superiority over the capitalist West, Stalin ensured that hewas depicted as a defender of Marxism-Leninism. Through his continued manipulationof the media, Stalin arrogated the position of Party historian, which ultimately allowedhim to assume the role of a socialist theorist, the equal of Marx and Lenin. In 1930, forexample, Stalin conducted a ‘conversation’ in Pravda, an exchange that involved a list ofquestions and answers. It began:

In the theses. . .adopted by the Third Congress of the Comintern, Lenin spoke ofthe existence of two main classes in Soviet Russia. We know speak of eliminating

79Wingrove, p. 18.80Sarah Davies argues that during the 1930s, Stalin expressed some reservations about the promotion of the cult,arguing that to focus on the leader was ‘unbolshevik’ (Sarah Davies, ‘Stalin and the Making of the Leader cult in the1930s’, in B. Apor et. al., pp. 29–46). This said, Stalin, who was undoubtedly in the position to do so, did not ceasethe cultivation of the cult. The cult could not have assumed such proportions without his approval.81Brooks, 2003, p. 49.82See John Barber, ‘The Image of Stalin in Soviet Propaganda and Public Opinion During World War 2’ in JohnGarrard and Carol Garrard (eds) World War 2 and the Soviet People: Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congressfor Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1993), pp. 38–50. Among themore famous odes to Stalin is M. Ciaureli’s The Fall of Berlin, in which Stalin not only makes a visit to defeatedBerlin, but also reunites two lovers who were separated by the war (Robert H. McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler(Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1988), p. 264).83Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 749.


the kulaks and the new bourgeoisie as a class. Does this mean that in the NEPperiod a third class has taken shape in our country?

Stalin’s answer: Lenin spoke of two main classes. But he knew, of course, therewas a third, the capitalist class. . .84

In correcting Lenin, Stalin demonstrated intimacy with the founder’s canon, while at thesame time asserting his own leadership. Again, this is an example of Stalin manufacturingassociation with the one Soviet hero.

Returning again to a key aspect of charismatic authority, the most important facet of thisrelationship between leader and lead is the mystical union that develops between the leaderand his followers and that ‘this sense of union (is) bought about through the direct associationof the leader with the traditional myths, symbols and heroes of the culture of his followers’.85

Through re-appropriating Bolshevist history, Stalin worked tirelessly to anoint himself as acentral revolutionary figure. However, as he was not actually this type of figure, a seeminglymajor problem emerges when trying to forge an association of charismatic authority to Stalin.To counter this, it is argued that by placing him with important revolutionary figures, andat important revolutionary events, Stalin and the Party were able to manufacture a directassociation that was to endure long after his death. An example of this can found in Stalin’sinfamous October 1931 letter to the journal Proletarskaia revololiutsiia, in which he demandedthat ‘the party pasts of real revolutionaries be evaluated not on the basis of documents thatarchive rats might turn up or fail to uncover’, but rather by virtue of their individual deedsand services to communism.86 The letter demanded that a party historian should be guidednot by what they could document, but by what they ‘knew’ must be true.

What followed was a frenzied period, deemed the great ‘reorganisation in light ofComrade Stalin’s remarks’, whereby (as highlighted by Nadezhda Mandelstam, who thenworked for the journal For A Communist Education) ‘all . . . [political] manuscripts wererechecked in great panic’, if not revised and reinterpreted beyond recognition.87 Anotherexcellent example of this type of revision is found in an article published in Pravdashortly after the publication of Stalin’s letter, in which a book on Comintern history wasdenounced because Stalin’s name was only mentioned twice in its analysis. The argumentpresented: ‘without [an exposition] showing Comrade Stalin’s leading role in the history ofthe Comintern, there can be no Bolshevik textbook on the history of Comintern’.88

While the propaganda never referred to Stalin as a god per se, certain qualities classicallyattributed to mystical beings were applied to him. As Kriukova’s ‘Glory to Stalin Shall beEternal’ illustrates, the Soviet folklore of this period depicted Stalin as omniscient andomnipotent:

(Stalin) looks and looks but can’t get enoughHe listens to everything with his keen earHe sees everything with his keen gazeHe hears and sees how the people liveHow the people live, how they workHe rewards everyone for good work.89

84Cited in Brooks, Thank you Comrade Stalin!, p. 64.85Gill, ‘Personal Dominance’, p. 101.86Cited in Tucker, ‘The Rise of Stalin’s personality cult’, p. 356.87Nadezhda Mandelstam,; transl. M. Hayward Hope against Hope: a Memoir (London: Collins, 1971), p. 259.88Cited in Tucker, ‘The Rise of Stalin’s Personality Cult’, p. 363.89Cited in Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations In the Time of Stalin (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 217.


Furthermore, a girl recalled her childhood feelings toward Stalin in the following words:

They said there was no God, and I made my God of Stalin. It’s funny, but let metell you. If I was sick or something hurt me, then I thought it would go awaybecause Stalin knew. He was just like a God.90

Stalin was ‘the friend to humanity’, ‘the great thinker’, and ‘the creator of the people’s hap-piness’.91 As explained by Brooks, ‘exemplary citizens thanked Stalin for their well-being inpictures and newspaper articles, outdoing each other in avowing how much they owed theState and leader’ for what they had.92

The power that settled around Stalin furthermore took on an almost magical quality. Thewriter, Kornei Chukovski, noted in his diary the effect of Stalin’s appearance at a congressof the Komsomol in April 1936:

And HE stood, a little weary, pensive and stately. One could feel the tremendoushabit of power, the force of it, and at the same time something feminine and soft. Ilooked about: Everyone had fallen in love with this gentle, inspired, laughing face.To see him, simply to see him, was happiness for all us.93

Through the manipulation and control of the media, a political environment was cultivatedin which the people developed a sense that while life might be difficult, only Stalin could fixthe problems prevalent in society.

With this, a ‘cult of personality’ specific to Stalin emerged. In response, a situation devel-oped over time whereby the people might have disagreed on whether his leadership hadbeen good or bad, but they nevertheless always portrayed him as ‘omnipotent and invinci-ble’. This again speaks to the existence of a genuine bond between Stalin and his followers.Hence, while it is virtually impossible to speak with authority of public opinion in Stalin’sSoviet Union, the enduring nature of the Stalin myth gives a clear indication of its overarch-ing impact. Stalin should thus not be viewed as ‘power itself, but as an image of powerwhich . . . [was] manipulated and exaggerated beyond proportion, but which . . . [was]also vulnerable to erosion and collapse’, if the people were ever to reject it outright.94

Consequently, the nature of the cult was actively worked and re-worked in response tochanging regime priorities. Over time, the base of the cult changed. For example, those whobenefited directly from Stalin’s industrialisation policies and even from the purges formedthe new base of the cult as the post-revolutionary regime gained increasing stability.However, it would be unfair to suggest that the cult only manifested through Stalin’s‘toadies’, since much of the basis of the cult was drawn from real achievement. Thegreat projects of the state – the five year plans, the Moscow Metro, the building of newindustrial centres – were all identified with the leader. Similarly, the exploits of modernSoviet heroes – war heroes, cosmonauts, scientists, explorers – were all associated withthe vozhd’.95

90Cited in Raymond Bauer, ‘The Pseudo-Charismatic Leader in Soviet Society’, Problems of Communism, 2:3-4(1953), pp. 11–14 (p. 13).91Cited in Brooks, Thank you Comrade Stalin!, p. 66.92Brooks, ‘Stalin’s Politics of Obligations’, p. 48.93Cited in Brooks, Thank you Comrade Stalin!, p. 60.94Sara Fenander, ‘Author and Autocrat: Tertz’s Stalin and the Ruse of Charisma’, The Russian Review, 58 (April1999), pp. 286–97 (p. 286).95Rees, pp. 12–13.


Furthermore, the cult was personal in its nature, best highlighted by Lev Kopelev, whodescribes how he felt on hearing Stalin, in 1941, assuring Soviets of victory ‘within a halfyear or a little more’:

. . .In my memory the pain and the horror of 1933 and 1937 had not grown cold. Iremembered how. . . (Stalin) had deceived us, how he had lied to us about the pastand the present. . .And nevertheless I believed him all over again, as did my com-rades. I believed him more than at any time in the past. Because, perhaps, at themoment I first felt a spontaneous, emotional attachment to him. . . This belief andheart felt devotion could not easily be broken. It was not broken by many years ofprisons and camps.96

The point to remember is that while Kopelev actively realised that he had been lied to, hestill believed Stalin.

In this, Kopelev presents a perfect profile of the sort of relationship that Weber believedwould exist between the charismatic leader and his disciples. As Willner notes, ‘suchemotions – devotion, awe, reverence, and, above all, blind faith – are what the charismaticleader generates in his followers. . .this relationship involves the abdication of choice and ofjudgement by followers and the surrender of the mandate to choose and judge to theleader’.97 The irrational nature of charismatic authority is thereby shown to be not onlyin opposition to societal norms or routine structures. The belief that the followers havein the charismatic leader is also of an irrational nature, as demonstrated by the fact thatKopelev feels an emotional attachment to a leader who he knows has committed wrong,and although he tries, he cannot help but believe. Kopelev has been neither tricked, nordoes he appear to be under any form of hypnosis. It is instead indicative of the type ofrelationship that must exist between a leader destined to change everything about a coun-try’s regime, if that change is to be solidified and perpetuated.

Finally, the reaction of Soviet citizens following the death of Stalin further supports theargument that a charismatic bond existed between the leader and his followers that was per-petuated throughout the entire existence of the former Soviet Union in one form oranother. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the government assaulted the Stalin cult,first obliquely, then explicitly, portraying Stalin as a mass murderer,98 But, rather thandestroying the cult, Stalin’s death caused, to varying degrees, a traumatic crisis of faith.Indeed, it led the people to wonder whether ‘Stalin was still the exemplary hero of thecult’s discourse or the polar opposite, an enemy of the people’.99

The strength of the charismatic bond was such that the revelations after the death ofStalin caused some people to re-evaluate their own lives. Among those who sufferedfrom a crisis of faith was Kopelev:

. . .Several years were required after the first disclosures of ‘the cult of personality’,years during which I determinedly reflected on my own recollections, wrenchingfrom myself ‘drop by drop’ the world view and world conception, the ideology

96Lev Kopelev,; transl. Gary Kern The Education of a True Believer (New York: Harper, 1980), pp. 266–267.97Willner, p. 6.98Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, delivered to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Unionin 1956, spoke explicitly of errors committed by the Stalin regime. It wasn’t until 1961 that Khrushchev madereference to crimes committed by the regime. Although it was a ‘secret’ speech, samizdat copies were circulatedthroughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.99Polly Jones, ‘From Stalinism to Post-Stalinism: De-Mythologising Stalin, 1953-56’, Totalitarian Movements &Political Religions, 4:1 (2003), pp. 127–132 (p.132).


and psychology of a slavish, doctrinaire myth making, before I could finally beginto understand what an ugly little pygmy I had imagined to be a handsome giant,how irremediably disastrous our – my – dialectical illusions and grand faith hadbeen.100

In this passage, it becomes clear that Kopelev felt betrayed by Stalin. Using the charismatictypology, this betrayal can be regarded as a breaking of the charismatic bond. Once Stalinwas dead, he was no longer able to prove himself, and hence the charismatic bond wasbroken. The fact that his followers lost faith in him, and hence Stalin lost his charismaticauthority, shows that the charismatic leader concept is applicable to Stalin. To take this onestep further, again using the Weber typology, the charismatic bond developed by Stalin wasnot transferred to his ‘office’ following his death. By making a deliberate decision to revealStalin’s errors, then crimes, the new Soviet leaders no longer sought to claim authoritybased on a charismatic tie with his followers.

While it has been argued here that the cult was manufactured, which directly implies thatthe charismatic bond could be characterised as fabricated, it would be wrong to describeStalin’s ‘cult of personality’ as a form of mass hypnosis that affected the complete strataof the Soviet population.101 According to Sarah Davies, this would lead to an oversimpli-fication of the situation. While the ‘charismatic, god-like image of the leader had adher-ents’, as demonstrated, this was not the only image that appealed to other segments ofsociety. The conclusion drawn by Davies is that ‘ordinary people selected those aspectsof the official cult language which conformed to their own ideas about leadership’.102

The examples above further strengthen this argument: the peasant Kriukova’s verse, thechild’s leader worship, and the intellectual Chukovski’s rapture all demonstrate both thedifferent demographic responses to the cult and its broad cross-demographic appeal.The charismatic bond that existed between Stalin and his followers, while manufactured,was still personal in its nature. Furthermore, at whom the bond was aimed is of limitedimportance, as Weber’s charismatic typology does not explicitly define what could betermed the ‘charismatic demographic’. It is not paramount that one identifies who the audi-ence is that the cult is trying to reach, only that it created a particular type of followerresponse, which in the case of Stalin was that of the protector of Russia.

Conclusion

Appreciating that the cultivation of Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ represented an attempt to‘manufacture’ a charismatic bond provides academics and scholars alike with an opportu-nity to reassess the applicability of Weber’s charismatic authority type when analysing thelegitimacy of the Soviet state under Stalin In turn, it provides a tool to analyze other non-democratic, even non-charismatic (at least in the traditional sense of the word) leaders andfind more objective interpretations about how they create, consolidate and perpetuatepopular, mass support for their leadership.

As Stalin initially had only dubious claims to charismatic authority, it is not unreasonableto argue that he manufactured it. He was, after all, not the consummate hero of the Russianrevolution, nor did he have many of the attributes traditionally associated with charismaticappeal. Finally, he was not privy to the type of popular adulation afforded Lenin as the

100Kopelev, p. 267.101See Medvedev, Let History Judge, pp. 302–303.102Sarah Davies, ‘The Leader Cult: Propaganda and its Reception in Stalin’s Russia’, in John Channon (ed) Politics,Society and Stalinism in the USSR (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 131.


accepted leader of the Russian Revolution. Consequently, Stalin co-opted the Lenin cult tothe degree that Lenin’s legacy became a legitimation technique for his own leadership.

When explored further, it becomes clear that rather than having the luxury to allow pol-itical traditions to develop in their own time in the former Soviet Union, Stalin acted tocreate a new form of traditionalism to legitimate his power base. The ‘cult of personality’,while negating the basic tenets of communist theory, at least in relation to the role of theleader, created a political atmosphere in which Stalin was revered as the saviour of Russia.Through it, he successfully transformed his dull, bureaucratic reputation as administratorto that of the dynamic leader. This is not to imply that he became a charismatic leader, oreven that he wielded charismatic authority in the strict Weberian sense, but rather to high-light the response of the people to his leadership. As a result of this harnessing of thepolitical atmosphere of the Soviet Union, the people responded to Stalin with adulationand devotion and thereby created a charismatic myth around Stalin reminiscent of eventhe most comprehensive reading of Weber’s theory of routinised charisma. Stalin’s legiti-macy can thus best be explained as a combination of routinised charismatic authority andmore mundane legalistic forms of authority.

The problem with a rudimentary conceptualisation of charismatic authority is that itdoes little to explain how dictatorial leaders can generate such levels of devotion andloyalty, with the follower responses similar to that of revolutionary leaders, if the regimeitself is not considered by outsiders to be a legitimate form of governance. In thisrespect, charismatic authority per se is not particularly useful as an analytical tool toanalyse stabilised forms of authority. Through the routinisation process, by contrast, thecharismatic element of the forms of authority mobilised during the change period is trans-formed into more functional forms. Only then can the idea of ‘charisma’ become pertinentto the study of stabilised forms of authority. In this sense, the case of Stalin provides aunique study of the routinisation of charisma, whereby an inherently transient form ofauthority can be consolidated into more enduring forms of legitimate authority premisedon charismatic legacy, if applied to the legacy consolidated around a prominent leaderwithin a totalitarian system.

In totalitarian systems, power and legitimacy rest in the ability of the leader to convincethe population that there is a genuine reason why their natural rights are curtailed by gov-ernmental policies and control. In these cases, since the vitality of the established insti-tutional framework is dependent on the reciprocal support of the people, the leaderplays an integral role in perpetuating the revolutionary zeal of a regime that no longerespouses the heady ideals professed during the actual change period. Often these leadersassume the role of a guardian of the people, who promises to ensure that the lofty goalsespoused by the vanishing revolutionary guard is still important and is a continuing objec-tive of the people. In the case of Stalin, this process is exemplified. While not one of therevolutionary guard, he managed to guide the Soviet Union from a period of economic pri-vation to a position of power within the international community following World War II.That this was consolidated through the construction of a manufactured, even fabricatedcult of personality does not downplay the legitimating force created by Stalin’s leadership.

When viewed from this perspective, manufactured charisma does not render Weber’stypology redundant. Nor, as suggested by Friedrich, does the application of the typologyto dictators undermine the leadership of ‘traditional’ charismatic leaders. Furthermore,more people hearing of the deeds of a particular leader does not subtract from the charis-matic appeal of this leader. Such arguments reflect a misunderstanding of the core rela-tional aspect of Weber’s typology. It is important to remember that Weber was veryparticular about where the charismatic leader’s authority came from; his followers or dis-ciples. If these followers felt that the leader was no longer worthy of support, then the leader


would lose his/her authority to lead. The charismatic nature of the leader is still scrutinizedby the followers, and an inability by the leader to prove his/her abilities in the moment stillresults in the charismatic bond being broken. Thus, despite claims to the contrary, Weber’stypology does offer us insights into Stalin’s attempts to legitimate his rule. More specifically,through the application of routinised charisma, Stalin’s attempts at legitimation are notonly better understood, but also present further avenues of exploring non-democraticlegitimation techniques through the use of modern media.

Notes on Contributors

Dr Carol Strong is an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello; she isalso concurrently an Honorary Fellow at the Contemporary Europe Research Centre at theUniversity of Melbourne (Australia). She received her PhD in political science from theUniversity of Melbourne.

Dr Matt Killingsworth is an associate lecturer in international relations at the University ofTasmania, Australia. He has published on post-communist justice (lustration) in Polandand the Czech Republic, legitimacy and lustration and dissent and opposition in theformer Communist countries of Eastern Europe.


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