Post-Totalitarian Leadership: Elites in the German Federal Republic

A good deal has been heard in recent years concerning the “liberation” of peoples living under totalitarian rule, but the question of who are the men who succeed to the leadership of a state after the fall of its totalitarian rulers has received relatively little attention. Such observations as have been made on the subject, whether by political opponents of a totalitarian regime or by professional social scientists, have tended to follow implicitly—if not explicitly—the theory of alternating elites. There is assumed to be, on the one hand, a more or less homogeneous totalitarian elite, and, on the other, an actual or potential counter-elite, representing the political antithesis to the totalitarian elite. The stability of the rule of the former is said to vary inversely with the degree of organization of the latter. The totalitarian elite is variously identified with the holders of high positions in the totalitarian system, with the “responsible leaders,” with an entire ruling class, or simply with those individuals who are said to be influential in the determination of national policy. The counter-elite is identified with the active overt and covert opponents of the totalitarian elite—resistance leaders, the “vanguard of the proletariat,” prominent exiles, and “men on whose backs in concentration camps the lash has written the new gospel in blood and tears.” Both elite and counter-elite are thus seen as directly, actively involved in the totalitarian system, either as its leaders or as its opponents. Revolution, in this schema, is identified with the destruction of the totalitarian elite and its replacement by the counter-elite. Or, conversely, the destruction of the totalitarian elite is an act of revolution and will result in the emergence of the counter-elite to power. It is an attractively simple thesis, and it warrants investigation.