ABSTRACT
The dominant model of civil-military relations in Communist countries has been the unitary "Communist" or "totalitarian" model, expounded by Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz in the 1960s. The totalitarian model possesses deficiencies in analyzing Soviet civil-military relations. The totalitarian model is of little value in analyzing army-party relations in such Communist countries as China, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, North Korea, and Cuba where the army has emerged as a powerful political actor with a key role in policymaking. Ivan Volgyes and Dale Herspring in two articles have propounded a political socialization model for Communist civil-military relations. Stressing the antagonism between army and party, the model sees the party Political Administration and party control over the army as the focal points of party-military relations. Unlike the Chinese and Vietnamese Communists, the Russian Communists lacked broad appeal in the countryside. The lack of a gestation period also meant the lack of institutionalization of proper procedures of control and organization.
