Leader cults: Varieties, preconditions and functions

Abstract

Max Weber famously outlined three different types of authority: traditional, rational-legal, and charismatic. The leadership systems of the twentieth century which generated their own leader cults (I. V. Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong), might be seen as embodying what Weber characterised as the ‘routinisation’ of charismatic authority. Whilst Weber’s typology offers a useful starting point for discussing leader cults it is also in some ways misleading.2 The Communist, Nazi and Fascist regimes of the twentieth century sought to legitimise themselves through a combination of appeals to tradition, legal right and charisma. What is unique and striking about them is the way in which they sought to construct legitimacy, by investing ideas, events, institutions, particular offices and personalities with charisma. Part of this strategy involved the promotion of leader cults, aimed at creating a bond between leader and subject. In this book we examine the leader cults in communist ruled states of the USSR and of Eastern Europe, and seek to explore further the nature of the strategies of constructing legitimacy that these states engaged in.