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nor the NEP (New Economic Policy) were referred to as "socialist
construction." Lenin nonetheless created the indispensable conditions for
the permanent substitution of ideology for reality, in which Mme. Arendt
rightly sees one of the characteristic traits of Stalinism.
What did the totalitarian regime need in order to flourish? The gap
between reality and ideology had to show itself In other words, the ac–
celerated development of production forces in accord with forced savings
and planning had to arouse phenomena comparable to those found in
Western Europe at the same economic stage (though these phenomena
worsened in the Soviet Union). At the same time, the ideological system
of interpretation that stood as official truth had to be maintained and
amplified through power. When Stalin took over the industrialization
program from the leftist opposition that had formulated it, he imposed
upon a recalcitrant people a comprehensive austerity program in order to
finance investments. His program also required that the peasants produce
grain without receiving consumer goods in return. The need to increase
yields and the doctrinaire desire to destroy every class founded upon pri–
vate ownership brought on the politics of collectivization. This led to the
fierce repression of peasant resistance, the temporary ruin of agriculture,
the slaughtering oflivestock, and famine . The kind of civil war that came
with the construction of factories and collective farms no doubt went on
being serenely baptized as "socialist construction." Inevitably, the logical
and murderous folly that to Mme. Arendt appears as the essence of totali–
tarianism kept on gaining ground. The Party had to be transformed into
an impeccably disciplined instrument, made to believe, on orders from
above, that it was daylight in the dead of night, and made to recognize
"socialism" in these tragic events of first-phase industrialization. One
needed an absolute faith in the Party, in History, and in the classless soci–
ety
as the fulfillment of humanity, in order to sustain both cynicism in
one's actions and a kind oflong-range idealism.
However, one could say that although circumstances can explain the
totalitarianism of 1930 to 1934, they do not explain the great purge of
1936 to 1938. And therein lies Mme. Arendt's main argument, that cir–
cumstances do not account for Stalinism's totalitarian terror, since such
terror increases just when it has become rationally useless. Her argument
is
forceful, set against superficial and erroneously objective books such as
Isaac Deutscher's, in which he seeks a comprehensive explanation of to–
talitarian phenomena in terms of socio-economic circumstances. In spite
of
everything, the victims of the great purge sought to account for the
phenomenon whose victims they were. Without reproducing here the
sixteen theories presented by Beck and Godin (pseudonyms of a physician
of
Austrian extraction and a Russian historian who met while incarcerated
