Was Stalin a Weak Dictator?

Abstract

Was Stalin a weak dictator? This sort of question is more familiar to students of Nazi Germany, who have pondered the nature of Hitler’s power since the late 1960s. Like the more liberal historians of the Soviet Union at the time, many historians of Nazi Germany were troubled by the inadequacies of the totalitarian model, which emphasized the boundless power of the dictator. Studies of the Nazi system increasingly observed the disintegration of government rather than the concentration of power in the hands of an autocratic regime in the 1930s. They pointed out that the system was ruled by a fluid aggregation of special commissions and other ad hoc organizations rather than a stable hierarchical bureaucracy.1 Some historians concluded that the coordination of these institutions was nevertheless the core of Hitler’s power, that bureaucratic chaos was part of a strategy of divide and rule.2 Others observed his aversion to fundamental decisions, even to decision making in general, and concluded that institutional leaders and other special interests often played the dominant role in decision making. Most famously, Hans Mommsen, in his Beamtentum im Dritten Reich, suggested that Hitler was a weak dictator.