Publication Details

Abstract

Studies carried out so far on this topic take as their starting point the conceptional and intelectual apparatus of Marxism in its Stalinist variant, stressing the one-sided revolutionary, dichotomic and a priori view in contrast to the multidimensional, functional and structural Marx’s analysis and his other analytical aspects (economic, sociological and psychological). The schemas and the conceptual apparatus in use were created or adjusted to the setting up of the system of personality cult and its glorification. We do not always realize the fact that the phenomenon termed personality cult is not apprehensible to its own terminology and stereotypes. The very term personality cult of J. V. Stalin is gnoseologically unproductive, barren. That which is usually designated as personality cult is a whole functional system of contingencies of elements in the social structure which came into existence on the basis of, among others, the following: 1. an objective situation comprehending the level of productive forces, czarist terror, the war, disruption and expectations connected with the revolution, which, following its victorious outcome, were shifted and modified by the reality that the revolution did not fulfil solely the goals of a proletarian revolution. On this basis arose a contradiction in the role of the leader of the revolution which, though functionally indispensable, requireres to be acknowledged in the accepted value orientations a smoke-screen of illusions, the mass projection in the ideal of a venerated leader masking this contradiction and compensating for unfulfilled expectations on the one hand, and using force against diverging tendencies of various objective interest, on the other. 2. Structures of revolutionary groups and institution camprising selection of cadres, manner of ruling, manner of decision making, type of relations with the environment, degree of interestedness of members and the like, all of which ware established with the aim of gaining power. After the victory these structures became socialized and replaced the old disrupted social structure. Structure set up as systems directed towards a goal, begin, once the latter had been achived by the mechanism of functional autonomy of motives to transform reality itself, intead of flexibly setting up new goals and changing its own structure.