How authoritarian rule was maintained

Getting into power is one thing. Staying there is another problem entirely.

Once a leader or party has seized control, they face a constant question: how do we stop people taking it back?

Historians group the answers into four tools: law, force, propaganda, and popular support. Almost every authoritarian regime uses a mix of all four — the balance just shifts depending on the regime.

The four tools of maintenance: Legal methods change the rules of the game. Force punishes anyone who breaks them. Propaganda shapes what people believe. Popular support means some of that belief is genuine. A regime that only uses force is fragile; one that also wins real loyalty is far harder to remove.

This is a cause and consequence story as much as anything else: the tool a regime reaches for first is usually a consequence of how it seized power in the first place.

A regime born from a violent revolution (like Stalin's USSR) tends to lean on force early. A regime that won broad public backing at the start (like Castro's Cuba) can lean more on support and propaganda.

Never treat these as separate boxes: IB examiners reward answers that show tools working together. Stalin's propaganda praised the same Five-Year Plans that his terror enforced. Don't write about 'propaganda' and 'force' as if they never overlap.

Europe: the USSR under Joseph Stalin (ruled 1924-1953) shows how far a regime can go when it leans on force.

Stalin rose to power after Lenin's death in 1924, and by the early 1930s he controlled the Communist Party almost completely.

His most feared tool was the NKVD. It operated outside normal courts, arresting anyone suspected of disloyalty — often on flimsy or invented evidence.

The Great Purge (1936-1938): Stalin's most extreme use of terror. Show trials accused senior Communists, army officers, and ordinary citizens of being 'enemies of the people'. Roughly 700,000 people were executed, and millions more sent to the gulag. Even loyal Party members were not safe — which was the point: fear kept everyone compliant.

Alongside terror, Stalin built a powerful cult of personality. Posters, songs, and statues presented him as the wise 'Father of Nations'. Propaganda linked his image directly to the Five-Year Plans — ambitious industrial targets that, when they succeeded, were credited entirely to Stalin's leadership.

Legally, Stalin used the 1936 Soviet Constitution to appear democratic — it promised rights and elections — while the Communist Party allowed no real opposition candidates. This is continuity and change in action: the outer shell of Soviet law changed to look modern, but real power stayed concentrated exactly as before.

Perspectives on Stalin's USSR: A gulag survivor's memoir describes terror, hunger, and arbitrary arrest. A propaganda poster from 1937 shows a beaming, benevolent leader guiding a grateful nation. Both are real historical sources about the same regime — historians must weigh why each perspective exists before drawing conclusions.

The Americas: Cuba under Fidel Castro (ruled 1959-2008) shows a different balance. Castro certainly used force and propaganda — but genuine popular support did much heavier lifting than it did for Stalin.

After seizing power in the 1959 revolution, Castro set up CDRs (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) in every block and village. They ran vaccination drives and food distribution — but also reported anyone suspicious to the authorities, blending welfare with surveillance.

The 1961 Literacy Campaign: Castro sent thousands of young volunteers into the countryside to teach reading and writing. Within a year, illiteracy fell from about 23% to under 4%. This single policy created enormous genuine goodwill — millions of poor and rural Cubans directly benefited, and many became lifelong supporters of the revolution.

Castro also controlled the media tightly and banned opposition parties by law — so legal control and propaganda were still present. But the welfare gains (literacy, free healthcare, land reform) gave the regime a depth of popular loyalty that pure terror alone rarely produces.

Asia: Mao Zedong's China (ruled 1949-1976) blended both approaches at even greater scale. Mao's land reforms and early healthcare campaigns won real peasant support — but his Cultural Revolution (from 1966) also unleashed Red Guard violence and purges against suspected enemies, echoing Stalin's terror far more than Castro's welfare model.