Sárospataki Füzetek 1. (1997)
1997 / 2. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: The roots of totalitarianism (A totalitarizmus gyökerei)
DR. FRANK SAWYER implode: fall apart from within. Tyranny depends on a conflict model of management, and ignores the fruits of true partnership and the sharing of power.4 But one cannot build on distrust. Totalitarianism relies on people’s need for identity and hope, but "public opinion is first manipulated - the aspiring dictator has to be an effective demagogue - then repressed."1 2 Or: "They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity" [II Peter 2:19]. Absurd logic Solzhenitsyn uses some dry humor to point out the absurdity that tyranny arrives at in its efforts to control others. It is well known that neurotic irrational fears lead to strange actions which do not counter the perceived problems. One example the novel gives is this: the camp authorities were afraid that a zek (prison slang for work camp convict) might save his meager daily ration of bread in the morning when he went out to the work site, and use these grammes of bread to escape into the frozen Siberian wastelands. So the camp authorities decided to send the daily bread rations out to the work site in a wooden chest. "Then one day three men helped themselves to a chest full of bread and escaped from a work site in a truck. The brass came to their senses, had the chest chopped up in the guard house, and let everybody carry his own ration again."3 The psychology of command versus that of initiative An example of the psychological base for a work ethic appears in the setting of the percentages (work quotas) for each day’s job to be accomplished. While this would seem to encourage the work gangs to work hard in order to receive their full ration of bread, in fact it also became an absurd item. As we read: 1 For some overviews see Michael Haralambos and Martin Holborn, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (London: Harper Collins, 1995), ch.9: ’Power, politics and the state’. 2 Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be (Harper: San Francisco), p.116. 3 Quotes from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, trans.H.T.Willetts (London: Harvill Press, 1996) 82
