Treatment of Opposition, Minorities, Women, and Religion; Assessing Success and Failure

The final measure of an authoritarian state lies in how it treated those under its power, especially the vulnerable and the dissenting, and in an overall judgment of what it achieved and at what cost. This lesson draws the comparative threads together and returns to the skills of historical evaluation.

Suppressing opposition

All these regimes were intolerant of organized dissent, but their methods spanned a wide range. Political parties other than the ruling one were banned or absorbed; independent trade unions, free press, and autonomous civil society were dismantled. Opponents faced imprisonment, exile, forced labor, or death. The Soviet Gulag and the Nazi concentration camps represent the extreme end; Fascist Italy's internal exile and Cuba's political imprisonment were harsh but genera