The Shaping of Popular Consent: A Comparative Study of the Sovie ...

Generally put, may we not argue that the American Dream encouraged entrepreneurial spirit, individualism, competition and diversity? Conversely, conventional wisdom understands that in the Soviet Union the collective ruled and one was compelled, by violence, to sacrifice his or her individual desires for the betterment of the group, or in other words, the centralised state. The United States, it is popularly understood, adhered to a market economy and promoted private enterprise, whereas the Soviet Union created a highly centralised, state-planned economy. It is generally held that the United States sought peace and harmony with its neighbours and diplomacy with its enemies. Conversely, the Soviet Union was aggressive and sought to conquer its foes and establish a neo-Empire. And finally, most would argue that while the United States wanted to spread democracy around the globe, the Masters of the Soviet Union wanted to control the world.

Let us develop this last point more fully. It is commonly assumed that while the United States led, and perhaps embodied, the “free world”, the Soviet Union was just like Nazi Germany: determined to force the free world to its knees.¹² Jeffrey Brooks’ recent, Thank You Comrade Stalin! explores this theme. Rhetorically, Brooks represents communism and fascism as fundamentally similar ideologies.¹³ In this view he is not alone. Igor Golomstock wrote that the USSR and Nazi Germany “shared the same element”.¹⁴ Much of the literature tells us that the Soviet and Nazi regimes both sanctioned state violence and terrorism beyond all moral comprehension (unlike western liberalism), both were illegitimate deviations from the natural course of their respective national evolutions (unlike western liberalism), both were expansionist (unlike western liberalism), and both were run by evil demagogues (unlike western liberalism). Indeed, Robert Harris, author of both Fatherland and Archangel, argued recently that there should be more comparisons between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany concluding that Stalin is a “much more terrifying figure” than Hitler (which is in fact also a core theme of the latter novel).¹⁵