The Issue of Periodization of a Totalitarian Political Regime

The article is devoted to the periodization of the totalitarian political regime. The main object of the article is the study of implementation of the totalitarian political regime in the USSR. The key factor of the establishment of the totalitarian regime was not the Bolsheviks, who came to power in 1917. The establishment of the totalitarian regime was a long and gradual process, caused by the death of the leader and the founder of the party (V.I. Lenin), and then – by the intraparty strife in the Communist party after the death of Lenin. The establishment of a dominant position of I.V. Stalin was started not from his taking up the post of the Secretary General of the Central Committee, but from his final victory over the opposition in the party and the elimination of any ideological dissension. The author argues that the presence of a figure of charismatic leader was the last missing part of the process of establishing a totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union. So the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union was established only by 1934.