Atomized masses are deliberately fabricated by destroying mediating institutions
Evidence
In order to fabricate an atomized and structureless mass, he had first to liquidate the remnants of power in the Soviets which, as the chief organ of national representation, still played a certain role and prevented absolute rule by the party hierarchy. Therefore he first undermined the national Soviets through the introduction of Bolshevik cells from which alone the higher functionaries to the central committees were appointed. By 1930, the last traces of former communal institutions had disappeared and had been replaced by a firmly centralized party bureaucracy whose tendencies toward Russification were not too different from those of the Czarist regime, except that the new bureaucrats were no longer afraid of literacy. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 763
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: ‘Atomization’ is defined operationally here — as a manufactured condition achieved by eliminating intermediate representative bodies, not a natural feature of modernity.
- XREF: Connects to the colonial/bureaucratic rationality strand: how administrative reorganization structurally dismantles the social ties that could resist domination.
Related
- Totalitarian rule required first destroying all intermediate communal institutions (similarity 0.92)
- Totalitarian rule requires an atomized and individualized mass, not mere social structurelessness (similarity 0.84)
- Purges, not historical catastrophe, created Soviet society’s unprecedented atomization. (similarity 0.80)