Yet his failure to achieve all his objectives in their entirety is scarcely proof that he did not succeed to a very large degree. The fact that a multitude of people were wrongly arrested was neither here nor there. Essentially Stalin was applying to the judicial system what he had already developed for the economic system. The management of most sectors of public affairs in the USSR was chaotic. Policy was imposed and quantitative targets were set with dire punitive sanctions in the event of failure to hit the targets. This had been how the industrial growth rates were administered in the First Five-Year Plan. Agricultural collectivisation had been directed in the same way. The point was that the entire administrative system operated on the premise that lower-level officials had to be given precise numerical indicators. Stalin and the Politburo knew that the information reaching them from the localities was frequently unreliable. Misinformation was a basic defect of the Soviet order. Just as waste occurred in industrial production, so unnecessary human losses could be accepted in the Great Terror. So long as Stalin achieved the ultimate aim of eradicating most of that mass of disgruntled individuals who might remain a menace he had no compunction about the mayhem he caused.
Unmistakably he had become the country’s despot. He had eliminated foes in every institution. Not even the party had restrained him. Among the main results of the Great Terror had been drastic reduction in the party’s power and status. Stalin had turned himself into the unchallengeable individual locus of state authority. His was a most personal autocracy. He had come closer to total despotism than almost any monarch in history. He held sway over the Soviet state; no state institution could push him into decisions which he found uncongenial. Grand policy was firmly in his grasp and, by unpredictable interventions in smaller affairs of state, he caused all holders of office to try and anticipate his wishes. The state, moreover, kept its people in a condition of traumatic subservience. Civil society barely existed. Only the Russian Orthodox Church kept the slightest vestige of autonomy from the state — and it was scarcely much of an autonomy when tens of thousands of priests had been murdered. Every other institution and association was subject to the requirements of the central political authorities. Stalin had stabilised his despotism and its structures by means of the Great Terror, and the pervasiveness of control by the one-party state was deep and irresistible.
Yet this was not a totalitarian dictatorship as conventionally defined because Stalin lacked the capacity, even at the height of his power, to secure automatic universal compliance with his wishes. He could purge personnel without difficulty. But when it came to ridding the Soviet order of many informal practices he disliked, he was much less successful. In such cases he was like someone trying to strike a match on a block of soap.
Constraints continued to exist upon his rule. In 1937 he had told the Party Central Committee that he intended to eradicate the network of political patronage in the USSR. Yet cliental groups survived. The politics of the USSR continued to involve patronage — and in many parts of the country this meant links based on families and clans. There were also local ‘nests’ of functionaries leading the party, soviets and other public institutions. Technical and social obstacles to a neat vertical system of state power remained. Functionaries promoted in the late 1930s, however much they admired Stalin, saw it was vital to be cautious in messages to Moscow. Misinformation from below remained a basic local requirement for self-protection. The press, judiciary and market had countervailed only weakly against provincial political establishments under the NEP; they had massively less weight — if indeed they had any weight at all — after 1928. The situation changed little after 1938. Stalin’s clique could not know everything with the desired accuracy. Promoted functionaries were keen to enjoy their privileges. Stalin needed to treat them well materially; he could not permanently rely on terror alone.
