ABSTRACT
Juan Linz's work distinguishing authoritarian, totalitarian, and democratic regime types was pathbreaking. His understanding of totalitarian states, particularly their communist variant, remains weak, however. Anticommunist sentiment in the Western world, combined with the difficulties of doing research in communist countries, has stood in the way. In Latin America they have thwarted our understanding of Cuba under Fidel Castro's rule. The chapter attempts to address this lacuna. It deals with a discussion of the impact of the Rectification Process (RP) and the theoretical implications of the case study. Castro launched the RP when communism still appeared a viable –even if disdained in the West –alternative to authoritarian and democratic regimes. Official discourse conveyed the impression that the RP was ideologically driven by a renewed state commitment to Marxism-Leninism and Guevarism. However, the state had institutional and not merely ideological reasons for launching the campaign.
