Soc (2016) 53:56–66
DOI 10.1007/s12115-015-9973-4
PROFILE
Revisiting the Banality of Evil: Contemporary Political Violence
and the Milgram Experiments
Paul Hollander 1
Published online: 4 January 2016
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Stanley Milgram’s remarkable obedience experiments have
been one of the most influential and controversial studies in
social psychology.1 They are highly original, theoretically sig-
nificant and closely related to the major political and social-
historical experiences and preoccupations of the 20th century.
The latter include the ideologically inspired mass murders, the
limited moral choices available to individuals in repressive
and regimented societies, as well as the venerable issues of
free will vs. social and situational determination. Despite their
importance and impact, there is room for a reconsideration of
these experiments and their relevance to understanding the
varieties and nature of political violence in the 20th and 21st
centuries.
Milgram’s findings were often linked to the influential and
similarly controversial ideas of Hannah Arendt, notably her
concept of the Bbanality of evil.^2 The obedience experiments
seemed to provide empirical support for her highly speculative
propositions inspired by the case of Adolf Eichman and
1
According to his biographer “His obedience research has become a
classic of modern psychology…a ‘must’ topic for introductory psychol-
ogy and social psychology courses, and any textbook for those courses
that failed to mention those studies would be considered incomplete.”
[Thomas Blass: The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy
of Stanley Milgram, New York: Basic, 2004, p. 259.]
2
Unveiled in Hannah Arendt: Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil, New York: Viking Press 1963.
* Paul Hollander
phollander32@gmail.com
1
35 Vernon St., Northampton, MA 01060, USA
especially his trial.3 The famous psychologist, Gordon
Allport called these experiments Bthe Eichman experiment.^4
Milgram himself wrote that Bafter witnessing hundreds of
ordinary people submit to the authority in our experiments, I
must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil
comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine.^5
It is most unlikely that Milgram would have undertaken his
experiments if there had been no Holocaust. The latter - a
unique historical case of mass murder and incomplete geno-
cide - inspired his study of obedience. He wrote: BThe Nazi
extermination of Jews is the most extreme instance of abhor-
rent immoral acts carried out by thousands of people in the
name of obedience.^6 While communist systems (Soviet,
Chinese and other) killed far more people than the Nazis, the
Holocaust is the only instance of an ideologically motivated,
premeditated, dispassionate, highly organized and technolog-
ically innovative effort to eliminate rapidly an entire ethnic
group of several million people - the Jews.7
Milgram was determined to find an explanation of this
historically unprecedented undertaking and located it in the
processes of obedience to authority that appeared to be a pre-
condition of mass murders requiring an elaborate division of
labor and the participation of large numbers of ordinary peo-
ple. Most puzzling for him and all those seeking to
3
Milgram’s biographer observed that BMilgram’s work provided the sci-
entific underpinnings for Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’
perspective…^ [Blass cited, p. 268.]
4
Quoted in Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental
View, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p.178.
5
Ibid., p.6.
6
Ibid., p.2.
7
Peter Kenez, an American historian wrote: BNo other mass murder was
so ideologically driven, so well organized, and carried out with such mad
efficiency.^ [The Coming of the Holocaust: From Antisemitism to
Genocide, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 1].
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
comprehend the Holocaust, was the question of Bhow appar-
ently normal people could so readily turn into brutal killers?^8
Milgram’s findings were both unexpected and startling: the
experiments showed that ordinary human beings were capable
and willing to inflict a great deal of pain on other human
beings (on total strangers) for no other reason than being or-
dered to do so by an authority figure. As Milgram put it Bthe
most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, sim-
ply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on
their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive pro-
cess… The behavior revealed in the experiments…is normal
human behavior..^9
The implication of these findings seemed to be far reaching
and startling: virtually anybody could become a mass murderer,
(or his accomplice), without an ideological or political motive,
or belief, and without being a sadist. Belonging to a bureaucratic
organization and readiness to obey one’s superiors appeared to
be sufficient conditions for performing inhumane acts, including
participation in mass murder. There was an obvious affinity
between the obedience experiments and the broader conclusions
drawn from them, including the phenomenon of the Bbanality of
evil^ and its suggested omnipresence.
Milgram’s findings resonated with the educated public, but
they were also subject to criticism since they involved decep-
tion of the experimental subjects and subjecting them to stress.
His findings have remained in the forefront of public and
social scientific interest.10 Milgram’s biographer concluded
that BMilgram taught us something profoundly revelatory
about human nature - about ourselves - that we did not know
before: just how powerful our propensity is to obey the com-
mands of an authority, even when those commands might
conflict with our moral principles.^11
The experiments were carried out, and received huge
amounts of public and social scientific attention, at a time - the
1960s and early 1970s - when the American public and opinion-
makers were preoccupied with the Vietnam war and domestic
social problems and conflicts. It was a period of intensifying
social criticism, collective soul-searching, and growing concern
with domestic social injustices. The Vietnam war in particular
led large portions of academic intellectuals, students and jour-
nalists to regard the United States and its political system unjust
and deeply flawed. Radical social critics and war-protestors rou-
tinely compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany, stimulated in part by
frequent televised reports of the civilian victims of American
8
Blass cited, p. X.
9 12
Milgram cited, pp.6, 188.
10
BThe wide public exposure he received via television appearances and
books reviews made him something of a minor celebrity… Milgram was
still giving invited talks on the obedience experiments in 1984 - 22 years
after he had completed them.^ [Blass cited, pp. 222, 232.] On the 50th
anniversary of his experiments the Journal of Social issues devoted a
whole issue (Vol.70, No.3.) to his work.
11
Blass cited, p.278.
57
military actions in Vietnam. Milgram himself argued Bthat if
the same institutions arose in the United States - concentration
camps, the gas chambers - there would be no problem finding
Americans to operate them…a potential for blind obedience ex-
ists in all people.^12 He further proposed in the conclusion of his
study that Bthe kind of character produced in American demo-
cratic society cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from
brutality and inhuman treatment at the direction of malevolent
authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are
told to do, irrespective of the content of the act…so long as they
perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.^
13
Milgram made numerous references to the most notorious of
the atrocities committed by American military forces in Vietnam,
the My Lai killing of civilians14 as a contemporary example of
the horrific results of blind obedience to authority.
The central message of his study was well received, name-
ly, that outrages such as perpetrated by the Nazis could happen
anywhere, including the United States, that political democra-
cy does not prevent their occurrence and it is legitimate to
compare and equate American misdeeds in Vietnam with
those of Nazi Germany. Jerome Brunner wrote in his
Foreword to Obedience to Authority: BStanley Milgram taught
us that in any society, anywhere, obedience to authority comes
all too easily…^ Brunner exemplified such misguided obedi-
ence by the more recent mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by
American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. 15
The obedience experiments clearly and ingenuously dem-
onstrated a widespread readiness to obey what was perceived
as legitimate authority even when such readiness results in
human suffering, or, as Philip Zimbardo put it, they demon-
strated Bthe power of social situations to influence human
behavior…[and] the failure of most people to resist unjust
authority.^16 The same experiments also encouraged ques-
tionable generalizations and conclusions and overlooked var-
iables highly relevant to politically inspired mass murders.
While Milgram’s findings and conclusions were widely em-
braced for indirectly confirming broader critiques of American
society and the political system, his experiments were also
criticized, as noted above, for their allegedly unethical aspects:
the use of deception (they were disguised as a learning exper-
iment) and for the stress they imposed on the experimental
subjects when they obeyed the experimenter in the belief of
inflicting pain (electric shocks) on the Blearner.^ Less frequent-
ly the experiments were also criticized for providing a point of
departure for dubious generalizations about human behavior on
He made this point in the preface to the German edition of Obedience
to Authority. Quoted in Blass cited pp. 269–270.
13
Milgram 1974 cited, p. 189.
14
See Ibid., pp. 176, 183, 186, 211.
15
Brunner: BForeword^ Obedience to Authority, New York: Perennial
Classics, 2004, p. XIV.
16
Philip Zimbardo: BForeword^ to Obedience to Authority, Harper pa-
perback edition, 1975 p. XV.
58
the basis of behavior observed in a laboratory setting. Milgram
was aware of the problem of such over-generalizations17 but
his study as a whole nonetheless encouraged them. He argued
that while there were great differences between obedience in
the laboratory and in Nazi Germany, there was Ba common
psychological process…involved in both events.^18 He also
wrote that BTo focus only on the Nazis…is to miss the point
entirely. For the studies are principally concerned with the or-
dinary and routine destruction carried out by everyday people
following orders.^19 These warnings notwithstanding, his ex-
periments and their conclusions have remained associated pre-
dominantly with the Holocaust and to some extent with
American atrocities in Vietnam.
There has been no attempt, to the best of my knowledge, to
apply Migram’s findings and insights to the mass murders car-
ried out by communist states. The obedience experiments and
their prevalent interpretations insistently focused on the
Holocaust and overlooked political violence of other types.
There are numerous references in Milgram’s study to the
Holocaust, and a few to the American atrocities in Vietnam,
but not a single one the vast amount of political violence perpe-
trated by communist systems. It is also noteworthy, that, as far as
I know, no attempts have been made by other social scientists or
historians to apply Milgram’s ideas to the analysis of the political
violence of communists states and movements.20 Only theories
17
Milgram cautioned that Bit is…important to recognize some of the
differences between the situation of our subjects and that of the
Germans under Hitler.^ He also pointed out that the experiments were
ostensibly devoted to increase knowledge and about learning, while the
Nazis pursued morally reprehensible objectives. Furthermore, Bthe mech-
anisms binding the German into his obedience were not the mere mo-
mentary embarrassment and shame of disobeying but more internalized
punitive mechanisms that can only evolve through extended relationships
with authority.^ [Milgram 1974 cited, p.176.
18
Obedience to Authority, 1974 p. 175.
19
Ibid., 178.
20
Not one of the 14 contributors to 1995 symposium on Milgram’s obe-
dience experiments raised the question of their applicability to the polit-
ical violence of communist states. [See BPerspectives on Obedience to
Authority: The Legacy of the Milgram Experiments^, Journal of Social
Issues, Fall, 1995]. Remarkably enough this has remained the case up to
the present as reflected in the 2014 symposium: BMilgram at 50:
Exploring the Enduring Relevance of Psychology’s Most Famous
Studies’^, [Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 70., Number 3, 2014.] in which
there is still no reference to communist systems. Apparently it did not
occur to a single contributor to these 14 articles, (with the exception of
one brief, passing reference to Stalin) that there have been other momen-
tous campaigns of mass murders in the 20th and 21st century undertaken
by communist states, which also invite reflection and research about the
part played by obedience to authority. I can suggest two possible expla-
nations of this spectacular and persisting indifference about, or ignorance
of, communist political violence. One is that American psychologists are
not interested in history and know little about it, including 20th century
communist states and their mass murders. Another possibility is that
residual leftist sympathies among American academic intellectuals, in-
cluding psychologists, predispose them to a more sympathetic view of
communist systems that precludes comparing their record of political
violence with that of Nazi Germany.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
of totalitarianism addressed the latter but without the psycholog-
ical approaches and considerations pioneered by Milgram.
It remains of great interest how these experiments might
apply and contribute to a more informed understanding of
political violence, and especially ideologically inspired mas
murders, not limited to the Holocaust. I will consider below
what light his work might shed on the patterns of political
violence in communist states. The significance of such an
inquiry is further increased by the large number of their vic-
tims21 and because this type of political violence has never
been subject to the sustained social scientific and public atten-
tion the Holocaust has received.22 Henry Dicks suggested that
this might have been the case because BHitler’s more patent
inhumanity provided an almost ideal diversion, drawing the
limelight, which allowed the Soviet mass purges and MVD
[ministry of internal affairs, in charge of the political police -
P.H.] concentration camps to go on almost unnoticed by the
world at large.^23
The mass murders of communist states are all the more
noteworthy because communist systems were far more idealis-
tic than the Nazi one, and greatly concerned, at least in theory
and in their rhetoric, with the unity of theory and practice. They
explicitly subordinated means, including as mass murder, to
ends, to the pursuit of the ideals they sought to realize.
The varied social scientific responses to the obedience ex-
periments fell into two broad categories. Psychologists (like
Milgram) focused on situational determinants, while histo-
rians probed the dispositional ones.24 Ervin Staub, a social
psychologist argued that personality and socialization (vari-
ables more dispositional than situational) also need attention,
as does the scapegoating propensity. He cited a study that
found that Bformer SS members grew up in authoritarian fam-
ilies and developed authoritarian personalities.^25
21
Estimates of the combined total of the victims of communist systems
approach 100 million. See R.J. Rummel: Death by Government, New
Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 1997; Stephanie Courtois et al.: The Black
Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror Repression, Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999; Tony Judt: BThe Longest Road to Hell,
^ New York Times, December 22, 1997. For estimates of the number of
Soviet victims (ranging between 15 and 20 million) see Robert Conquest:
The Great Terror: A Reassessment, New York: Oxford University Press,
2008 and Anne Applebaum: Gulag: A History, New York: Doubleday,
2003.
22
I made this point at some length in BThe Attention Gap and Selectivity
in Moral Concerns,^ Introduction to Paul Hollander ed. From the Gulag
to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and
Repression in Communist States, Wilmington DE: ISI Books, 2006, pp.
XXIV–XXXIX.
23
Hery V. Dicks: Licensed Mass Murder: A Social-Psychological Study
of Some SS Killers, New York: Basic Books. 1972, p. 268.
24
See Richard Overy: B‘Ordinary Men’ Extraordinary Circumstances:
Historians, Social Psychology, and the Holocaust^, Journal of Social
Issues, Vol. 70, Number 3, 2014, p. 519.
25
Ervin Staub: BObeying, Joining, Following, Resisting and Other
Processes in the Milgram Studies…^ Journal of Social Issues cited,
pp.502, 503, 509.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
Thomas Blass, Milgram’s biographer, has been among
those who contested Bthe idea that a cold, emotionless, and
dutiful approach, such as Eichman’s, was characteristic of the
Nazis’ behavior.^ Eichman himself Bpursued his goal of ship-
ping as many Jews as possible to the extermination camps
with a degree of drive, perseverance and enthusiasm that
was clearly beyond the call of duty.^ 26 Blass further sug-
gested that
The historical evidence for the spontaneity, inventive-
ness, and enthusiasm with which the Nazis degraded,
hurt and killed their victims also argues against
explaining their behavior as mere obedience to an
authority’s commands… Milgram’s approach…does
not provide a wholly adequate account of the Holocaust.
Clearly, there was more to the genocidal Nazi program
than the dispassionate obedience of the average citizen
who participated in the murder of his fellow citizens out
of a sense of duty and not malice. At the same time, it
could not have succeeded…without the passive or ac-
tive complicity of Everyman. While Milgram’s ap-
proach may well account for the dutiful destructiveness
of the dispassionate bureaucrat…it falls short when it
comes to explaining the more zealous, hate-driven cru-
elties that also defined the Holocaust.27
It has also been argued by Henry Dicks, that Bthough this
gigantic operation [the Holocaust, that is - P.H.] was carried
out in a cold, matter-of-fact, bureaucratic spirit…we must as-
sume that the majority of SS and Nazi activists shared violent
racist beliefs with their Fuhrer as their central justification and
instilled them into their simpler followers.^28 What Arendt
and her followers did not seem to grasp is that such an imper-
sonal, bureaucratic disposition can be compatible with strong-
ly held convictions about the rectitude of the tasks undertaken,
including meticulously planned mass murder. Eichman was
both a competent administrator and fervent hater of Jews,
intent on exterminating them efficiently 29 More generally
speaking, Bbureaucratic obedience and antisemitic ideology^
can be, and have been, successfully integrated.30
26
Blass cited, p. 272. It has also been shown by other authors that Arendt
made a serious error asserting that Eichman was not an antisemite and
lacked ideological motivation. See Deborah E. Lipstadt: The Eichman
Trial, New York: Schoken, 2011 and Richard J. Bernstein: Radical
Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation, Cambridge, UK Polity Press, 2002,
see esp. p. 270, note 42.
27
Blass cited, p. 276.
28
Dicks, p. 57.
29
Arendt insisted for no discernible reason (other than being beholden to
her own theories), that Eichman was not an antisemite. [See Arendt 1963,
especially pp. 22–23.]
30
Arthur G. Miller: BThe Explanatory Value of Milgram’s Obedienmce
Experiments: A Contemporary Appraisal,^ Journal of Social Issues cited,
p. 567.
59
Not surprisingly, German authors raised the question:
What kind of men were these who accepted murder as
their daily work? They were perfectly ordinary people,
with one difference: they could act as members of the
‘master race’. They decided whether a person lived or
died…Hitherto undreamt-of chances of promotion re-
vealed themselves. There were pay bonuses, extra leave
and privileges such as alcohol and cigarettes. And at all
times a sense of power, for the state was happy to re-
move all sense of personal responsibility from them. 31
BPerfectly ordinary^ they were not, nor were they, for the
most part, sadistic monsters, but in neither case were their
beliefs irrelevant. As Richard Overy wrote: BOnce the reserve
policemen were engaged in killing they had few reservations
because of the disposition instilled… mass murder became
part of a daily service routine informed by a shared ideology
in which individual motivation cannot easily be
determined.^32
****
In the following I will further examine the limitations
of the obedience experiments as a source of generalizable
explanations of large-scale contemporary political vio-
lence. Since the experiments suggested that situational
pressures were the prime source of obedience to authority,
and that such pressures outside the laboratory could result
in seriously harming, or killing innocent people, we must
take a closer look at the nature of the situational pressures
the perpetrators of mass murders, such as the Holocaust,
encountered. A major question arises from the fact that
German authorities did not punish those who refused to
participate in the execution of Jews, and it was not diffi-
cult to evade such duties.33 If this was the case, then the
situational pressures were bound to be far less compelling,
and Bobedience to authority^ carried much less weight (in
motivating obedience) than the experiments suggested,
and as has been widely believed.
In light of the above, other reasons for complying with
morally problematic orders have to be considered. They
should include a) the perpetrators agreement with the official
policy of killing the Jews, (or other groups) - an agreement
31
31. Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, Volker Riess eds.: ‘The Good Old Days’:
The Holocaust as Seen by Its perpetrators and Bystanders, New York:
Free Press, 1988, p. XIX.
32
Overy in Journal of Social Issues cited, p. 520.
33
See for example BForced to obey orders - the myth,^ in BGood Old
Days,^ cited, pp. 75–86. Christopher R. Browning also pointed out that
Bin the past 45 years no defense attorney or defendant in any of the
hundreds of postwar trials has been able to document a single case in
which refusal to obey an order to kill unarmed civilians resulted in the
allegedly inevitable dire punishment.^ [Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: Harper
Perennial, 1993 p. 170]
60
that could combine with personal aversion towards them;34 b)
taking pleasure in the activity - sadism and sense of power; c)
sense of duty blended with conformity and comradeship -
sharing an unpleasant duty with one’s comrades: Brefusing
to shoot constituted refusing one’s share of an unpleasant col-
lective obligation.^35 d) the material rewards noted above by
the German authors and e) a combination of all of the motives
enumerated and some others, peculiar to given historical con-
ditions.36 Under these conditions, Bfollowing orders^ was a
hollow excuse on the part of the perpetrators as well as an
inadequate explanation of their behavior.
It remains a critical problem of these experiments that they
did not address (even indirectly) the essential question: why
various authorities, political systems, movements. or particu-
lar individuals embark on campaigns of violence, even exter-
mination, which require the obedient assistance, or willing
cooperation of many people who do not necessarily share
the motivation and outlook of their superiors.
There is a huge difference between those who were deeply
committed to the belief that violently purifying the world of
Jews (or kulaks, Trotskytes, Tutsis, BInfidels,^ etc., etc.) is a
lofty and noble goal - and those who were ordered to imple-
ment this goal without sharing such beliefs. There is also a
fundamental and morally significant difference between those
who volunteer for, and relish participation in, the mistreatment
and killing of various groups of people, and those who take
part in such activities reluctantly, under strongly felt situation-
al pressures. It remains difficult to determine what proportion
of those engaged in the great mass murders of the past century
belonged to either group of wrongdoers but there is evidence
that a substantial portion of the perpetrators, Nazi and com-
munist alike, endorsed the objectives of their actions, and
some of them enjoyed participation in the mass murders.
The experiments did not, and could not, touch on the deep-
ly felt convictions of those who initiated and organized the
major campaigns of political violence in our times, and why
they believed that such violence was necessary and fully jus-
tified. It has not been widely, or explicitly recognized that the
findings of the obedience experiments only applied to under-
standing the attitude and behavior of low-level perpetrators.
34
To say the least, (as Browning put it) BThe Jew stood outside their
circle of human obligations and responsibility…they [the executioners]
had at least accepted the assimilation of the Jews into the image of the
enemy.^ [Ibid., 73]
35
Ibid., pp. 184–185. Browning emphasized Bthe pressure for conformity
- the basic identification of men in uniform with their comrades and the
strong urge not to separate themselves from the group…^ [Ibid., p.71]
36
Browning listed: Bwartime brutalization, racism, segmentation and
routinization of the task, special selection of the perpetrators, careerism,
obedience to orders, deference to authority, ideological indoctrination and
conformity. These are factors applicable in varying degrees, but none
without qualification.^ [Ibid., p. 159] Needless to say all this applied only
to the Holocaust, Browning was not trying to generalize to other mass
murders.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
The part played by the experimental subjects corresponded (in
theory) to the roles of those who, when ordered, pulled the
trigger in the mass executions, or shoved Jews into the gas
chambers. For this reason associating the message of these
experiments with Eichman has been totally misplaced, since
he was a high ranking planner and organizer of the Holocaust,
belonged to the Nazi political elite and zealously endorsed the
BFinal Solution.^
The experiments did not attempt to illuminate the motiva-
tion of those directly responsible for the mass murders of the
past century, Nazi or communist - such as Eichman, Himmler,
Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria - nor could they shed light on the
outlook of figures such as Hitler and Stalin, the highest author-
ities inspiring and legitimating the mass murders. Obviously,
individuals of this kind did not devise or organize mass murder
in response to the commands of higher authorities - they them-
selves were the higher authorities who strongly believed that
the mass murders were fully justified, both as a matter of col-
lective self-defense and as a means to purify their society, or the
whole world, of undesirable groups and individuals.37
The experiments did not and could not differentiate be-
tween a) the individuals who devise, design and legitimate
political violence on the one hand, and those who execute
such designs, on the other. 38 Nor could they address the
differences among types of political violence, ranging from
industrial style mass executions (gas chambers) and mass
shootings, to pogroms, ethnic cleansing, acts of terror and
assassinations.39
Experimental studies of obedience could not shed light ei-
ther on the motives of those who incited and carried out Bethnic
cleansing^ in places like Rwanda (in 1994), or on the motives
of present day Jihadist terrorists who give every indication of
obeying only their own fervent and fanatical religious beliefs -
which include the promise of other-wordly rewards for their
murderous deeds - rather than the commands of authorities.
The conclusions drawn from the experiments overlooked,
or explicitly disputed, that personal pleasure and satisfaction
was often generated by such activities - either sadistic,40 or
derived from the sense of power, or from the satisfaction of
37
For a further discussion of the connection between acts and legitimat-
ions of political violence see Paul Hollander BIntroduction^ to Paul
Hollander ed.: Contemporary Political Violence and Its Legitimation,
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008., pp. 1–20.
38
Browning emphasized the difference between the executioners and
designers of the Holocaust: B‘grass-roots’ perpetrators of the Final
Solution…were not desk murderers who could take refuge in distance,
routine and bureaucratic euphemisms that veiled the reality of mass mur-
der. These men saw their victims face to face.^ [Ibid., p. 36.]
39
To be sure at the time these experiments were first conducted ethnic
cleansing was an unknown concept (though not an unknown practice)
and Jihadist terror did not exist.
40
In his conclusions Milgram wrote that there was no B…aggression,
anger, vindictiveness or hatred in those who shocked the victim^
[Milgram 1974, p. 188.] Arendt made the same claim about Eichman’s
attitudes toward his victims.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
scapegoating impulses which encourage and readily legiti-
mate violence by blaming groups or individuals designated
as Bthe enemy.^
Another set of motives laboratory experiments cannot shed
light on are the material incentives, benefits, rewards or elite
status political systems can provide to the specialists in orga-
nized violence. The interests of diverse social or ethnic groups
can also be served by eradicating competitors for material
benefits or status.
Most difficult is to separate motives which are often
intertwined. Individuals engaged in political violence (or its
legitimation) can simultaneously seek to gratify a hunger for
power, or glory, pursue in good conscience the dictates of an
uplifting ideology and concurrently improve their social-
economic position. That is to say, obedience to authority is
compatible with enthusiastic support for the objectives and
ideals of the power-holders, of the authorities41; it may also
be compatible with the pleasure derived from the infliction of
pain as well as the pursuit mundane material and group
interests.
Despite the presumed intentions of Milgram,42 the experi-
ments lent themselves to a non-judgmental, morally relativis-
tic interpretation by endorsing the idea of the Bbanality of
evil.^ Arguably, the latter discourages moral judgement and
attempts to assign responsibility for devising, committing or
legitimating moral outrages inspired by political agendas and
objectives, or any other reason. The Bbanality of evil^ also
implies moral equivalence among different social and political
systems, movements and groups of people, all of them sup-
posedly capable in equal measure, to obey the commands of
amoral authorities.
Christopher Browning’s conclusions of his study of certain
German perpetrators of the killings of Jews are relevant here:
BThe reserve policemen faced choices and most of them com-
mitted terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved
by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have
done as they did. [my emphasis] For even among them, some
refused to kill and others stopped killing. Human responsibil-
ity is ultimately an individual matter.^43 Daniel Goldhagen
made the same point more forcefully, and it has been the
animating idea of his lengthy book on the perpetrators of the
Holocaust. He wrote: BThe conventional explanations [of the
Holocaust - P.H.] do not acknowledge, indeed they deny, the
41
The remarks of a German police officer illustrate this mentality: BWe
police went by the phrase, ‘Whatever serves the state is right, whatever
harms the state is wrong.’ …it never entered my head that these orders
could be wrong…I was…at the time convinced that the Jewish people
were…guilty… The thought that one should oppose or evade the order to
take part in the extermination of the Jews never entered my head.^
[BGood Old Days^ pp. 220–221]
42
Since I knew Milgram quite well (he was a close friend) for over
20 years I believe that he was not inclined to moral relativism and did
not refrain from taking strong judgmental positions on various occasions.
43
Browning, p. 188.
61
humanity of the perpetrators, namely that they were agents,
moral beings capable of making moral choices.^ He further
argued that
The notion that the perpetrators contributed to genocide
because they were coerced, because they were unthink-
ing, obedient executors of state orders, because of social
psychological pressure, because of prospects of personal
advancement, or because they did not comprehend or
feel responsible for what they were doing, owing to the
putative fragmentation of tasks, each can be demonstrat-
ed …to be untenable… The initiative that the perpetra-
tors routinely showed in their cruel and lethal actions
toward the Jews, the zeal that characterized the Germans
carrying out the retributive and exterminatory policy
against Europan Jewry, cannot be accounted for by con-
ventional explanations.
Goldhagen proposed that a specifically German, murder-
ous (Beliminationist^) antisemitism was the fundamental ex-
planation of the Holocaust, i.e. Bthe perpetrators’ belief in the
unalterably demonic character of the Jews…^ or Ba set of
beliefs that defined the Jews in a way that demanded Jewish
suffering as retribution…[a] profound hatred… Such an un-
dertaking derives generally from enthusiasm for the project.^
What he called Bvoluntaristic cruelty…[that] had no instru-
mental purpose…^ further supported his argument that a pro-
found, strongly felt, and widely shared hatred and fear of Jews
among Germans was Bthe main motivational pillar^ and key
explanation of the Holocaust.44 He also drew attention to the
Bcelebratory atmosphere that sometimes prevailed in institu-
tions of killing…celebrations to mark significant massacres,
killings…^ and the perpetrators’s Bwillingness to have their
wives live among them as they slaughtered Jews…their ea-
gerness to preserve memories of their genocidal deeds by
means of photographs which they took and posed for with
evident pride…^45
44
Goldhagen was criticized for singling out murderous antisemitism, he
believed was peculiar to Germany, as the only explanation of the
Holocaust. While it is true that only Nazi Germany introduced industrial
style mass murders of Jews, many other European nationalities displayed
comparable levels of murderous hatred of them and engaged in their
killing, sometimes assisting the Nazis, sometimes independent of them,
when the opportunity presented itself.
Present day Islamic radicals are another group whose murderous
hatred of Jews rivals, and possibly exceeds similar sentiments of the
Nazis.
45
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Random House, Vintage
Books, 1997, pp. 392, 385, 404, 389, 391, 377, 383.
Visual evidence of these attitudes may also be found in the
Holocaust Museum in Washington DC (among other places) in the pho-
tographs of cheerful, smiling Nazi executioners standing by their victims,
or next to their mass graves, before or after performing their grisly task.
62
The focus on obedience also diverts attention from social
and personal pathologies which at times fueled (and are likely
to do so in the future) the kind of political violence, or evil,
that came to be designated, and diminished by Arendt, as
Bbanal.^ Nor did the experiments address the likelihood that
in reality (outside the laboratory setting) different motives
combine, or converge in the genesis of political violence,
and there is no obvious way to separate them, or to assign
primacy to one over another. It is of interest that German
judicial authorities who endorsed the Holocaust disapproved
of taking personal pleasure in the eradication of the Jews, and
those who indulged their sadistic disposition were occasion-
ally disciplined. The appropriate court made clear that
the accused [in a particular case - P.H.] shall not be
punished because of actions against the Jews as such.
The Jews have to be exterminated…It must be assumed
from the outset that the accused did not act out of sadism
but out of a true hatred for the Jews. He nevertheless let
himself be drawn into committing acts of cruelty which
are to be attributed to severe character deficiencies and a
high degree of mental brutalization… …Execution for
purely political motives shall result in no punishment…
[But] Men acting out of self-seeking, sadistic or sexual
motives should be punished by a court of law…46
It is noteworthy that the same authorities considered Bthe
true hatred of the Jews^ the proper and legitimate motive for
their extermination.
****
Goldhagen’s explanation of the Holocaust inadvertently
and indirectly leads to the possibility that obedience to author-
ity played a greater part in the Soviet practices of repression
than in the Nazi mass murders. This assertion only applies to
those who performed or assisted in the murderous acts, not to
their superiors who designed and legitimated the killings.
There was nothing in Russian, or pre-Soviet culture, or in
even Soviet ideology, comparable to the German
Beliminationist antisemitism,^ that is to say, the intense, ob-
sessive preoccupation with, and hatred of, a single, identifi-
able, allegedly evil and powerful group (like the Jews) desig-
nated as the arch-enemy, and blamed for all the ills and injus-
tices of society or even personal misfortunes. Peter Kenez,
wrote: BHitler and his followers managed to connect every-
thing that they disliked and feared in the modern world to
Jews.^47 There was no comparable obsessive preoccupation
on the part of Soviet (or other communist) leaders and ideo-
logues with any particular group of enemies. The alleged en-
emies of the Soviet system were a diverse and changeable
group, their definitions and identities varied and depended
46
BGood Old Days^ pp. 201, 203, 205.
47
Kenez 2012, p. 289.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
on the tactical political goals and needs of the system.
Virtually anybody could be designated as the enemy of the
state and Party on short notice, and accused of both specific
and unspecific crimes and wrongdoing.
Those entrusted with the repression and actual killing of the
alleged enemies of the Soviet state did not necessarily harbor
grievances against them (analogous to the culturally condi-
tioned, longstanding and pervasive antisemitic aversion to
Jews that existed in Germany), often they did not even know
their identity, or the official reasons for liquidating them.
Therefore, a mindless, unthinking obedience to authority
was bound to play a greater part in carrying out the mass
murders in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany.
At the same time there was a pronounced resemblance
between German and Russian authoritarian traditions support-
ive of obedience to authority. Pre-Soviet Russia had a
longstanding authoritarian tradition that rivaled, or exceeded
that of pre-Nazi Germany. Respect for authority was deeply
ingrained in Russians, and obedience to authority was an in-
tegral part of the authoritarian mindset and tradition. In all
probability, replicating Milgram’s experiments in the Soviet
Union would have yielded higher rates of obedience than it
did elsewhere, and it would probably also reach high levels in
present day Russia that has revived and reinvigorated author-
itarian traditions.
As did the extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany, the
liquidation of millions of politically undesirable elements in
the Soviet Union required the cooperation and division of
labor of large numbers of police and military personnel, of
specialized forces (GPU, NKVD, MVD, KGB), as well as
civilian administrators and transportation workers. While
there are numerous studies of those involved in the BFinal
Solution,^ (like Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men) seek-
ing to understand the motivation of the German executioners
of Jews, there are no comparable studies of those who per-
formed the Soviet-communist liquidations.
We know of one commonality in the attitudes of the exe-
cutioners, Nazi and Soviet: for an undetermined number of
them these activities were not free of conflict and unease, as
indicated by the generous supply of alcohol that was provided
to alleviate their apprehensions at the time they were to engage
in their grisly activities.48
Another similarity between the organization of Nazi and
Soviet mass murders that both often relied on deceiving those
to be killed. Jews were repeatedly assured that they will be
transported to places of work, or given a bath (before led into
the gas chambers). Less well known that some of the Polish
officers before being shot were given a farewell reception and
sendoff by military bands, prior to their supposed removal to
48
See Browning p.68 and David Satter: It Was a Long Time Ago, and It
Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past, New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 59–60.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
another location to be set free.49 Another deception common
to both systems was the claim that forced labor will liberate or
rehabilitate those to be destroyed - a more obvious falsehood
in the Nazi than in the Soviet case. Signs at the gates Nazi
concentration camps promised that Bwork will set you free^
while posted at the entrance of numerous Soviet labor camps
was the slogan BHonest labor: the road to home.^50
It is a safe assumption that members of the Soviet political
police, or state security organs obeyed their commands with-
out hesitation, or protest when ordered to shoot various
Benemies of the state^ (and Polish prisoners of war). What
we do not know is, with what degree, or mixture of enthusi-
asm, indifference, or reluctance they complied. In the Soviet
as in the German case there is insufficient data to generalize
about, or quantify the attitudes of the executioners and their
accomplices. There is little information about the political
beliefs and attitudes of the Soviet rank-and-file executioners.
According to one source many were Bparty members with
little education. Several were described as taciturn, but they
gave the impression of being dedicated to their work.
Nonetheless there is evidence that their role in thousands of
murders had an effect on them.^51 Several committed suicide
and others became alcoholics.
There is also evidence of numerous instances (in both the
Nazi and Soviet setting) when the politically determined exe-
cutions (or tortures) were not merely matters of obedience to
authority, sense of duty, or belief in the necessity of such
actions but also a source of pleasure, or entertainment, and
opportunity for freely expressing aggression.
Whether out of a sense of duty or for pleasure, several
leaders of the Hungarian communist party and high ranking
political police officers attended the execution (by hanging) of
Laszlo Rajk, principal defendant, and his associates following
the post World War II Hungarian show trials. They watched
the execution taking place in the prison yard from upstairs
windows while refreshments were served. Following the exe-
cutions a celebratory boat trip on the Danube was arranged to
honor the Soviet advisers who helped in the preparation of the
trials and in the extraction of false confessions. It was also
attended by major figures of the Hungarian political and state
security elite. 52
A notorious instance of enjoyment derived not merely from
witnessing or celebrating politically legitimated killing, but
49
Satter, p. 233.
50
Avraham Shifrin: The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration
Camps of the Soviet Union, Uhidingen, Switzerland: Stephanus, 1980, p.
10.
51
Satter, p. 59.
52
Vladimir Farkas: Nincs Mentseg: Az AVH alezredese voltam (No
Excuse: I was a lieutenant colonel of the AVH) Buapest: Interart Studio,
1990, pp. 239–240, 241. AVH is the abbreviation (in Hungarian) of State
Security Authority.
63
from participating in it, was exemplified by some Soviet
NKVD officers and a particular general:
In addition to normal executioners, high-ranking NKVD
officers also took part in shooting prisoners although in
keeping with their rank, they were not obliged to do so.
This was called ‘having a shoot’ and was apparently
done for relaxation. One of those who relaxed in this
manner was General Vasily Blokhin… The case of
Blokhin is particularly illustrative of the way NKVD
officers viewed their victims as enemies who were
completely without humanity. In addition to shooting
prisoners for sport, he was a central figure in many liq-
uidations, including the murder of thousands of Polish
prisoners of war in Kalinin. He also executed
Tukhachevsky …Isaac Babel and…Vsevolod
Meyerhold. When he participated in large-scale liquida-
tions, he donned his own uniform - rubber apron, leg-
gings, and boots…despite his participation in hundreds,
if not thousands of murders, he was extremely popular
in the NKVD for his simplicity, cheerfulness and read-
iness to help anyone in a difficult situation.53
In all probability Blokhin was convinced that a higher pur-
pose fully justified shooting the Polish officers, while evident-
ly he also enjoyed doing it. Another high ranking Soviet
NKVD officer, Dmitri Tokaryev, commander of an execution
squad in Katyn pointed out that the Poles executed were class
enemies and added B‘I am proud of the work I did in defense
of our revolution.’^54
A former Hungarian political prisoner reported that his in-
terrogators who tortured him appeared to be Bfilled with a
consciousness of their mission and professional pride…The
detectives…all fell upon me…kicked me all over my body.
They…acted like a party of drunks intoxicated with rage. Not
for a moment did their fury appear simulated…These primi-
tive men…were not shamming…they were firmly convinced
that they were dealing with…a determined enemy of the state
who refused to confess.^55 A Czech political prisoner had a
similar experience with his interrogator: Bhe was trying so
hard to hurt me… Never before or since have I seen someone
so passionately involved in his work.^56
Further light is shed on the disposition of individuals work-
ing for the Soviet political police by a former Soviet agent,
53
Satter, p.60.
54
Quoted in David Pryce-Jones: The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire,
New York: Holt, 1995, p.13. According to another account Tokaryev
denied direct participation in the executions but Bagreed to provide all
organizational assistance.^ [Satter pp. 242–243]
55
Bela Szasz: Volunteers for the Gallows: Anatomy of a Show Trial, New
York: Norton, 1971, pp. 70, 15, 21.
56
Alan Levy: Good Men Still Live! The Odyssey of a Professional
Prisoner, Chicago: O’Hara 1974, pp. 84–85.
64
Nikolai Kholkov. He recalled criteria suggested for their re-
cruitment by his superior, Pavel Sudoplatov (who distin-
guished himself by organizing the assassination of Trotsky):
B‘Go search for people who are hurt by fate or nature…those
suffering from an inferiority complex, craving power and in-
fluence but defeated by unfavorable circumstances …The
sense of belonging to an influential and powerful organization
will give them a feeling of superiority…they will experience a
sense of importance, close connection with power.’^57 In a
similar vein Peter Hruby, a Czech author wrote: BEvery nation
has a small percentage of potential criminals in is population
…In totalitarian dictatorships these people…get their best
chance and can really enjoy themselves, at the same time
feeling proud that they are serving a great cause.^58
Victor Serge, the idealistic Russian revolutionary, noted a
long time ago that in the early years of the Soviet Union the
organs of coercion attracted two contrasting types:
The Party endeavored to head it [the Cheka, first em-
bodiment of the political police - P.H.] with incorrupt-
ible men like Dzerzhinsky, a sincere idealist, ruthless but
chivalrous, with the emaciated profile of an Inquisitor…
But the Party had few men of this stamp and many
Chekas: these gradually came to select their personnel
by virtue of their psychological inclinations. The only
temperaments that devoted themselves willingly and te-
naciously to…‘internal defense’ were those character-
ized by suspicion, embitterment, harshness and sa-
dism… perverted men seeing conspiracy everywhere.59
Dzerzhinsky himself reportedly remarked that Bonly saints
or scoundrels can serve in the GPU, but now the saints are
running away from me and I am left with the scoundrels.^60
Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD between 1941 and 46
was quite unlike Dzerzhinsky, personifying boundless power-
hunger and an exceptional amorality and corruptibility.
According to one of his biographers he was characterized by
Bthe seeming absence of a human dimension in his
personality^ and according to another he impressed Stalin
favorably by his Bpredatory character and lust for power.^61
Presumably his behavior was also guided, to some degree, by
57
Nikolai Khoklov: In the Name of Conscience, New York: McKay
1959, pp. 165–166.
58
Peter Hruby: Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist
Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, New York: Pergamon Press, 1980 pp.
223–224.
59
Victor Serge: Memoirs of Revolutionary, 1901–1941, London: Oxford
University Press 1963, p. 80.
60
Quoted in Robert Conquest: The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the
Thirties, New York: Macmillan, 1968, p. 544.
61
Amy Knight: Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant, Princeton NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1993, p. 10; Dmitri Volkogonov: Gyozelem es
Tragedia: Stalin Politikai Arckepe, (Victory and tragedy: the political
portrait of Stalin) Budapest: Zrinyi, 1990, p. 236.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
a belief in the nobility of the Soviet system and its long term
objectives.
Individuals such as Beria (and other heads of the Soviet
political police such as Yagoda and Yezhov) were in all prob-
ability attracted to their position because of an overdeveloped
thirst for power and a similarly excessive pleasure in its un-
constrained exercise legitimated by ideologically inspired cer-
tainties and rationalizations. They also took advantage of the
opportunities such a position provided for personal enrich-
ment, and in Beria’s case, sexual predation on underage girls.
Another set of motives emerges from a former Chinese Red
Guard’s recollections and reflections illustrating the irrele-
vance of obedience to authority in political mob violence that
erupted in communist China during the so-called Cultural
Revolution:
Beating is addictive. The dark side of human nature,
whenever it is given a chance to surface, will ex-
plode…I remember one day when the students at our
school couldn’t find anybody to beat…[they] went to a
nearby commune. The commune leadership pointed out
to them a landlord who was also labeled as a bad ele-
ment… He was beaten to death… Beating was the only
way to show one’s hatred [toward the enemy, that is -
P.H.] as well as one’s love to the great leader…Beating
someone to death involved…a whole group. No one
dared to show weakness. Non-participation was a sign
of a weak revolutionary…62
Similar attitudes were apparent among crowds of people in
various parts of the former Soviet Union who enthusiastically
volunteered their services to the German occupiers engaged in
purifying these areas of Jews. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote BIn
Kaunas, Lithuania…the Jews were clubbed to death with
crowbars, [by the civilians - P.H.] before cheering crowds,
mothers holding up their children to see the fun, and
German soldiers clustered round like spectators at a football
match.^63
A German observer wrote of another such a display of
pubic violence in Lithuania:
After the entire group been beaten to death, the young
man [who did most of the beatings - P.H.] put the crow-
bar to one side, fetched an accordion… stood on the
62
Quoted in Gong Xiaoxia: Repressive Movements and the Politics of
Victimization, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1995 p.157.
63
BForeword^ by Hugh Trevor-Roper to Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen,
Volker Riess eds.: BThe Good Old Days^ - The Holocaust as Seen by
Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, New York: Free Press, 1988, p. XII. The
attitudes described in the quote, and especially the singing of the national
anthem are reminiscent, of Islamic terrorists shouting BGod is Great^
while murdering people. Both are grotesque and pathetic attempts to
associate repugnant acts with nationalistic or religious symbols and be-
liefs and thereby justify them.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
mountain of corpses and played the Lithuanian national
anthem…The behavior of the civilians present (women
and children) was unbelievable. After each man had
been killed they began to clap and when the national
anthem started up they joined in singing and clapping.
In the front row were women with small children in their
arms who stayed there until the end of the whole
proceedings.64
In the occupied areas of the former Soviet Union public
executions were sometimes organized and publicized by the
German authorities and were well attended by both German
military personnel and the civilian population.65
In many instances the private correspondence and diaries
of German military personnel further reflected their hearty
approval of the genocidal activities they witnessed or partici-
pated in.66 A German police official in occupied Poland noted
that Bmembers of the Grenzpolizei-kommissariat [border po-
lice commission] were, with few exceptions, quite happy to
take part in shooting of Jews. They had a ball…Nobody failed
to turn up…people today give a false impression when they
say that the actions against the Jews were carried out unwill-
ingly. There was great hatred against the Jews; it was
revenge…^67
Collective self-defense was the most widely used and mor-
ally most satisfying justification of different types of political
violence ranging from the mass murder of Jews and that of the
miscellaneous enemies of the communist states, to the assas-
sination of particular individuals deemed to be a threat to the
authorities. Pavel Sudoplatov, lieutenant-general in the
OGPU, wrote:
It is strange to look back…and re-create the mentality
that led us to take vengeance on our enemies with cold
self-assurance. We did not believe that there was any
moral question involved in killing Trotaky or any other
former comrades who had turned against us. We be-
lieved that we were in a life-and-death struggle for the
salvation of our grand experiment, the creation of a new
social system that would protect and provide dignity for
all workers and eliminate greed and oppression of cap-
italist profit…Active operations [were] logical actions
64
Ibid., pp. 31–32. The invocation of the Lithuanian national anthem by
the mass murderer here described is also reminiscent of presnt day Islamic
terrorists who are in the habit of shouting BGod is Great^ when commit-
ting morally repugnant acts of violence. It is hard to decide what is more
absurd and delusional: the attempt to associate in order to legitimate the
murder of innocent people with a national anthem, or with God, but in
both cases the perpetrators obviously felt that their inexcusable atrocities
required some lofty symbolic justification, or excuse.
65
See BExecution as popular entertainment - The murder of Jews as
public entertainment^ in Ibid., 107–135.
66
Trevor-Roper cited, p. XI.
67
BGood Old Days^ cited p. 76.
65
taken to prevent damage to our agent networks or to
our interests.68
Markus Wolf, former head of the foreign espionage depart-
ment of the East German political police (Stasi) quoted
Bertold Brecht in his memoirs: B‘what baseness would you
not commit,/To stamp out baseness?’^ adding that Bwe had all
internalized such rationalizations in pursuit of a better, social-
ist world. Almost everything was permitted, we felt, as long as
it served the Cause.^69 Molotov felt the same way as he ratio-
nalized, in retrospect, the Purges: BOf course there were ex-
cesses but all that was permissible, to my mind, for the sake of
the main objective - keeping state power!…The terror cost us
dearly but without it things would have been worse.^70 Two
high level NKVD officers, Dmitri Tokarev and Pyotr
Soprunenko, both closely associated with the Katyn killings,
who Bduring the years of Stalinist terror…held the power of
life and death… depict[ed] themselves as civil servants who
were merely doing their job^71 as did Molotov signing orders
for executions during the Purges.
Shortly before his death Pol Pot of Cambodia displayed
similar equanimity concerning the unnatural death of over a
million and half Cambodians under his exceptionally bloody
dictatorship: BI do not reject responsibility - our movement
made mistakes, like every other movement in the world.
But…we had no other choice…we had to defend our-
selves…my conscience is clear. Everything I have done..is
first for the nation and the people of Cambodia.^72
These explanations and pleadings illustrate the remarkable
human capacity - no less puzzling, and reprehensible than
mindless obedience to amoral authorities - to dehumanize
and demonize other human beings and justify the infliction
of suffering and death, here and now, by uncertain future ben-
efits and gratifications.
It was the taken for granted subordination of means to ends
that remains the key to understanding much of the large-scale,
goal-oriented political violence in both Nazi Germany and the
communist states and remains preeminent in present day po-
litical violence. This mentality, and especially the untroubled
moral separation of means from ends, is further illuminated by
Nathan Leites, an American political scientist in his discussion
of the attitude of the Soviet elite:
68
Pavel Sudoplatov: Special Tasks, Boston: Little Brown, 1994, pp. XII,
3.
69
Markus Wolf: Man Without a Face, New York: Random House 1997,
p.233.
70
Quoted in Albert Resis ed.: Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin
Politics, Chicago: Ivan Dee 1993, pp. 265, 78.
71
Satter, p. 242.
72
Nate Thayer: BDay of Reckoning,^ Far Eastern Economic Review,
October30,1997, pp. 14, 15, 16.
66
The use of means at sharp variance with the state of
affairs under communism itself will not interfere with
its ultimate realization. The Party must accept as a mat-
ter of course, any expedient degree of discrepancy be-
tween means and ends…The Party must be prepared to
inflict any amount of deprivation on any number of
human beings if this appears as ‘necessary’… The re-
fusal to use necessary bad means appears to the Bolshe-
vik as an expression of stupidity…or imperfect dedica-
tion to the great goal; or as self-centeredness which
keeps one more concerned with not touching dirt and
not feeling guilt than with transforming the world.73
George Lukacs, the Hungarian Marxist philosopher, and
life-long supporter of the Soviet Union, expressed these sen-
timents in slightly different language: BThe highest duty of
communist ethics is the accept the necessity of acting immor-
ally. This is the greatest sacrifice that the revolution demands
of us. The conviction of the true communist is that evil trans-
forms itself into bliss through the dialectics of historical
evolution.^74 Similar sentiments pervaded members of the
SS: BThey were all the Fuhrer’s soldiers fighting a ubiquitous
enemy; their historic task must be done in the SS spirit of self-
surrender without the selfishness of private emotion.^75
Heinrich Himmler conveyed identical convictions in his fa-
mous speech to SS Group leaders, assuring them that behold-
ing piles of Jewish corpses need not undermine their sense of
decency and that the program of extermination they conducted
will be a Bglorious page in our history.^76
Again, it has to be emphasized that these attitudes and com-
mitments guided the behavior mainly of those who devised,
organized and legitimated programs of lethal political violence,
and to a much lesser (undetermined) extent the attitudes of
those who implemented their blueprints when ordered to do so.
Communist leaders, ideologues and specialists in the liqui-
dation of undesirable groups had at their disposal another
legitimating device in addition to their ideals and philosophi-
cal beliefs that also helped to silence doubt about morally
73
Nathan Leites: A Study of Bolshevism, Glencoe IL: Free Press, 1953,
pp. 141, 114–115.
74
Quoted in Daniel Bell: BFirst Love and Early Sorrows,^ Partisan
Review, November 4 1981 p. 547
75
75. Dicks cited, p. 55.
76
xHimmler quoted in Joachim C. Fest: The Face of the Third Reich:
Portraits of the Nazi Leadership, New York: Pantheon Books, 1970,
p.118.
77
Quoted in Martin Malia: The Soviet Tragedy, New York: Free Press
1994, p.268. Such devotion to the Party did not save him from being
executed in 1937.
Soc (2016) 53:56–66
dubious policies; it was the myth of the infallibility of the
Party. Georgi Pyatakov, one of the early revolutionaries and
an important Party functionary reportedly said BIf the Party
demands it…I will see black where I thought I saw white…
because for me there is no life outside the Party.^77 George
Kennan’s observations about Andrei Gromyko further cap-
tured this mindset: BThe Party became…his mother, his father,
his teacher, his conscience, and his master…And if it turned
out that what the Party required to be done…involved appar-
ent injustice or cruelty - well, one might regret that it was
found necessary…But it was not one’s own responsibility.^78
More generally, Kennan concluded that BFor anything under-
taken in response to the will of the collectivity (in this in-
stance, the Party), no matter how distasteful, no matter how
unattractive from the standpoint of individual morality, there
could be no guilt, no questioning, no remorse.^79
Obedience to authority has been an important contributor
to certain types of political violence but not its singular pre-
condition. Moreover, the widespread disposition of human
beings to inflict suffering and death on other humans in pursuit
of various political objectives does not make such a disposi-
tion banal.
The demand for the type of obedience Milgram was inter-
ested in could not have arisen without an ideological agenda
that included the attribution of infallibility to either a leader or
an institution (such as the Communist Party), some type of
collectivism, and an unshakeable commitment to far reaching,
future oriented objectives and social-political transformations
which involved purifying the world of undesirable groups
variously defined.
Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, and associate of the Davis Center for Russian
and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of
15 books. This article was originally written as a paper for a conference
held in Kolomna, (Russia) in December 2014, organized by the Moscow
State Institute of Humanities and Social Studies.
78
George F. Kennan: BThe Buried Past,^ New York Review of Books,
October 1988.
79
George F. Kennan: At a Century’s Ending: Reflections, 1982–1995,
New York: Norton, 1996, p. 236.