History terms in Authoritarian rule (from 1750 CE onwards)

The middle ground between support and resistance under a dictatorship: outward conformity, such as joining organisations or attending rallies, for safety, career or lack of an alternative.

The thirteenth month's pay introduced for Argentine workers under Perón, one of the benefits that built working-class support.

The Nazi programme (1939–1941) for murdering disabled people in psychiatric institutions, which killed about 70,000 people by August 1941.

The campaign in the Chinese Communist Party after the Lushan conference of 1959 against officials accused, like Peng Dehuai, of 'right deviation' for criticising the Great Leap Forward. It made officials afraid to report shortages and worsened the famine.

The Chinese campaign of 1957 that followed the Hundred Flowers, in which about 550,000 critics were labelled "rightists" and lost their jobs or were sent to labour camps.

The belief that the Arabic-speaking peoples form one nation that should be free of foreign control, whether within existing states or through the pan-Arab aim of political union; Nasser became its leading voice in the 1950s.

Egypt's single official political organisation from 1962, which followed the Liberation Rally (1953) and the National Union (1957).

The article of the Weimar constitution that allowed the president to take emergency measures, including issuing decrees with the force of law and suspending civil rights, if public order and security were seriously threatened.

The article of the Soviet criminal code (from 1927) that defined "counter-revolutionary" crimes so broadly that it could be used against almost any criticism of the regime.

The forced transfer of Jewish-owned businesses and property to non-Jewish owners in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, usually at far below their value.

Economic self-sufficiency: a policy of producing everything a country needs at home so that it does not depend on imports, pursued by Fascist Italy, by Nazi Germany from 1936 and by Franco's Spain in the 1940s.

A form of rule in which power is concentrated in a leader, party, army or colonial administration that cannot be removed through free and fair elections, and that limits political opposition and civil liberties.

'Women's riots': protests led by peasant women in Soviet villages in 1929–1930 against collectivisation, for example to stop the removal of grain, livestock or church bells or to take back seed from collective farm stores.

'Rafters': Cubans who left the island for the United States on rafts and small boats, above all about 35,000 in August–September 1994 after Castro announced that the coastguard would not stop them.

The resolution of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (March 1921) that forbade organised groups inside the party from opposing its leadership's policy.

A peasant in Mao's China given a few months' basic medical training to provide health care in a village, especially from 1968.

Mussolini's campaign from 1927 to raise Italy's birth rate through taxes on bachelors and rewards for large families.

The failed invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles in April 1961, which strengthened Castro's position and his alliance with the USSR.

The arrest and sentencing of 75 Cuban dissidents, independent journalists and librarians in March 2003, many to more than twenty years in prison.

Rule by a strong leader who takes power after revolution or disorder, claims to stand above parties and classes, and seeks approval through plebiscites, as Napoleon I and Napoleon III did.

The Chinese Communist campaign of 1950–1951 against former Guomindang officials, secret societies and alleged enemies of the new regime, in which hundreds of thousands were executed.

Argentina's General Confederation of Labour, the trade union federation that became the organised base of Peronism.

Max Weber's term for power that rests on followers' belief in the exceptional qualities of a leader, as opposed to tradition or law.

The party founded in Shanghai in July 1921 that, under Mao Zedong's leadership, won the civil war and has ruled the People's Republic of China since 1949.

A regime's practice of winning over potential opponents or key groups by giving them jobs, influence or privileges, so that they have a stake in its survival.

Obedience obtained by force or the threat of force, such as arrest, imprisonment, violence or the loss of a job or home.

Cuban neighbourhood committees founded on 28 September 1960 to organise community work and rallies and to watch residents for political disloyalty.

An ideology, based on the work of Karl Marx, that aims at a classless society in which the means of production are owned in common; in the twentieth century, also the system of one-party rule by communist parties in the USSR, China, Cuba and elsewhere.

A camp where civilians or political prisoners are held without trial in harsh conditions, such as the British camps for Boer and African civilians in the South African War (1899–1902) and the camps run by the SS in Nazi Germany from 1933.

A treaty between the papacy and a state that regulates the position of the Catholic Church in that state, such as Napoleon's Concordat of 1801, the Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany (1933) and Franco's Concordat of 1953.

The practice in which a man keeps one or more secondary partners, of lower status than his wife, alongside her.

A movement of German Protestant clergy and congregations, formed in 1934, that rejected Nazi control of the Protestant church and the pro-Nazi German Christians. Leaders such as Martin Niemöller were imprisoned.

Obedience given willingly, because people agree with a government, benefit from it or accept its right to rule.

The process by which a new regime secures control after taking office by removing rivals, taking over state institutions and silencing opposition.

The sudden and illegal seizure of power by a small group, usually from within the army or the state, as by the Free Officers in Egypt in 1952.

The protests by Catholic parents and villagers in Bavaria in 1941 against a Nazi order to remove crucifixes from school classrooms, which forced the order to be withdrawn.

The use of propaganda, ceremony and the arts to present a leader as an exceptional, almost superhuman figure who embodies the nation or the revolution.

Mao's campaign of 1966–1976 to renew revolutionary spirit and remove rivals, in which Red Guards attacked party officials, teachers and "class enemies".

The work unit in Mao's China, through which urban workers received jobs, housing, rations and welfare, and through which the party watched and organised them.

An Argentine decree of March 1956 that banned Peronist symbols, songs, images and even the names of Juan and Eva Perón in public.

The Soviet campaign of 1930–1933 to destroy the 'kulaks' as a class, by seizing their property and deporting about 1.8 million people to remote regions.

A Spanish legal term for disrespect towards public officials; a 1949 law under Perón widened and toughened the offence, which was used against opposition politicians and journalists.

"The shirtless ones": the Argentine urban workers who supported Perón, a name first used as an insult by his opponents and then adopted with pride after 17 October 1945.

Rule by one person or a small group with unlimited power, not limited by a constitution, elections or courts.

The expression of disagreement with a regime or its policies, in private or in public, without necessarily trying to bring the regime down. A dissident is a person who openly criticises an authoritarian regime.

Groups of working-class young people in western Germany who rejected the Hitler Youth in the late 1930s and 1940s; some fought Hitler Youth patrols and, in 1944, took part in armed attacks.

An anti-communist guerrilla rising in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba from 1959 to 1965, crushed by the Cuban government in what it called the struggle against bandits.

The charitable foundation set up in 1948 and led by Eva Perón, which built hospitals, schools and homes and gave aid directly to the poor.

The Cuban law of 1975 that set out equal rights in marriage and required husbands and wives to share housework and childcare when both worked.

A nationalist and anti-communist ideology founded by Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1919 that glorified the nation, the leader, violence and war, rejected liberal democracy and sought to unite all classes in a single national community.

The Cuban state's women's organisation, founded in 1960 and led by Vilma Espín, which mobilised women for the revolution's campaigns.

The women's branch of the Peronist movement, founded by Eva Perón in 1949, which organised women as Peronist voters through local centres.

Göring's economic plan of 1936 to make Germany self-sufficient and ready for war within four years.

The secret group of young Egyptian army officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser that overthrew King Farouk on 23 July 1952.

The "leader principle": the Nazi idea that authority flows down from a single leader whose will is law, replacing elections and debate.

The four radical leaders of the Cultural Revolution, including Mao's wife Jiang Qing, who were arrested in October 1976, a month after Mao's death, and later blamed for the Cultural Revolution's excesses.

The Nazi organisation (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF) that replaced the trade unions in May 1933 and represented employers and workers together under party control.

The Nazi secret state police, which arrested political opponents and others the regime targeted; it was small and relied heavily on denunciations from the public.

The Nazi "coordination" of German institutions in 1933–1934, bringing state governments, parties, unions, the civil service, the press and clubs under Nazi control.

A secret lodge of nationalist Argentine army officers, including Juan Perón, that played the leading part in the military government formed after the coup of 4 June 1943.

The worldwide economic collapse that followed the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, with falling trade, prices and production and mass unemployment into the mid-1930s.

Nicholas Timasheff's term (1946) for the Soviet return to traditional values in the mid-1930s, including the ban on abortion (1936), harder divorce and praise of the family.

The wave of mass arrests and executions in the USSR in 1936–1938, including the show trials, the purge of the army and the NKVD mass operations.

Stalin's abandonment of the New Economic Policy in 1928–1929 for forced collectivisation of agriculture and rapid industrialisation under the Five-Year Plans.

The Chinese Nationalist Party founded by Sun Yixian (Sun Yat-sen) and led from 1926 by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek); it governed much of China from 1928 until its defeat by the communists in 1949.

The Nazi party's youth organisation for boys (with the League of German Girls for girls), made the official youth organisation in 1936 and compulsory in 1939.

The systematic, state-organised persecution and murder of about 6 million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, from 1933 to 1945; most of the killing took place between 1941 and 1945.

Ukrainian for 'death by hunger': the famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine, caused by Stalin's grain procurement policies, which killed an estimated 3.5–5 million people. Whether it was a genocide is debated.

China's household registration system, formalised in 1958, which tied each person to a place of residence and controlled movement, especially from countryside to city.

Mao's invitation in 1956–1957 for intellectuals to criticise the Chinese Communist Party, which ended when the criticism became too sharp.

Perón's state trading agency (1946), which bought farmers' crops at low fixed prices and sold them abroad at higher prices, using the profit for industry and welfare.

The period in Argentina from the military coup of 1930 to the coup of 1943, when conservative governments kept power through electoral fraud.

Opposition from inside a regime or its ruling elite: rival leaders in the ruling party, army officers, senior officials, church leaders or intellectuals.

Laws of July 1961 in which Nasser's government nationalised most banks, insurance companies and large firms in Egypt.

The Soviet Communist Party's youth organisation, for people aged about 14 to 28.

The Communist Party of Germany, founded in 1918–1919; its rising vote in 1930–1932 increased middle-class and elite fear of revolution. It was banned in 1933.

A group of German opponents of Hitler, named after Helmuth James von Moltke's estate at Kreisau, that met in 1940–1943 to plan the government and society of Germany after Nazism. Several members were executed after the 20 July plot of 1944.

The Nazi pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, in which synagogues were burned, Jewish shops and homes wrecked, about 90 Jews killed and about 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.

Literally 'fist': a Soviet term for a supposedly rich peasant who exploited others. Under Stalin it was applied to any peasant who resisted collectivisation.

A document every Soviet worker had to carry under a decree of December 1938, recording their jobs and conduct, used to control movement between jobs.

A movement of the wives, mothers and daughters of Cuban political prisoners arrested in the Black Spring of 2003, who marched silently in white after Sunday Mass to demand their release.

The redistribution of land from large landowners to peasants or the state, used by the CCP in China, the Free Officers in Egypt (1952) and Castro in Cuba (1959) to win support and break the power of old elites.

The Chinese system of "reform through labour" camps, in which prisoners, many of them political, did forced labour and underwent political re-education.

"Living space": the Nazi aim of conquering land in eastern Europe for German settlement at the expense of the Slav peoples.

The Nazis' description of how they took and secured power in 1933–1934 through appointment, elections and laws such as the Enabling Act, while also using violence and intimidation.

The notes dictated by Lenin in December 1922 and January 1923 assessing the party's leaders, which warned against Stalin's power and rudeness and proposed removing him as General Secretary. It was read to delegates in 1924 but not published.

The Cuban ration book, introduced in 1962, which entitles each household to fixed quantities of basic goods at low prices.

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, compiled by the army's political department under Lin Biao in 1964 and printed in vast numbers during the Cultural Revolution.

The level of material well-being a person or group enjoys: income, food, housing, consumer goods, health and leisure.

The retreat of the Red Army from its base in Jiangxi to Yan'an in north-west China, in October 1934 to October 1935, during which Mao became the CCP's leading figure.

A riot along the Malecón, Havana's seafront, on 5 August 1994, during the economic crisis of the Special Period. It was the largest protest against Castro's government and was followed by the rafter crisis.

The march of 1946 in which Kolla Indigenous people walked about 2,000 kilometres from north-western Argentina to Buenos Aires to demand the return of their lands.

The mobilisation of Mussolini's Fascist squads towards Rome in October 1922, after which King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister.

The emigration of about 125,000 Cubans by boat from the port of Mariel to the United States in 1980, allowed by the Castro regime.

The Chinese law of 1 May 1950 that banned arranged marriage, concubinage and child marriage, and gave women the right to divorce and to own property.

A Nazi loan of up to 1,000 Reichsmarks (from 1933) to newly married couples, at first on condition that the wife left paid work; a quarter was cancelled for each child born.

The official ideology of the Soviet Communist Party: Marx's theory of class struggle and proletarian revolution as adapted by Lenin, above all the idea that a disciplined vanguard party must lead the revolution and rule in the workers' name.

A government led by a committee of military officers, usually after a coup.

A Nazi decoration (from December 1938) awarded in bronze, silver and gold to 'Aryan' mothers of four, six and eight or more children.

The Arabic term for intelligence services; in Nasser's Egypt, the security and intelligence agencies that watched and arrested the regime's opponents.

Hitler's failed attempt to seize power in Bavaria on 8–9 November 1923, after which he was tried and imprisoned.

The Islamist movement founded in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 to build a society based on Islam; it was the Free Officers' main rival for popular support and was banned after an attempt on Nasser's life in 1954.

The transfer of a private company or industry into state ownership.

The ideology of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party: an extreme racist form of fascism built on antisemitism, the idea of a racial national community, the leader principle and the conquest of living space in the east.

Hjalmar Schacht's policy of 1934 that controlled German imports and arranged bilateral trade deals, saving foreign currency for raw materials and rearmament.

The Soviet People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which from 1934 included the political police and ran the Gulag; it carried out the Great Terror.

The secret order of 30 July 1937 that launched the mass operation against "former kulaks", criminals and other "anti-Soviet elements", with regional quotas for shooting and camp sentences.

A three-person panel of local NKVD, party and prosecuting officials that sentenced people in the mass operations of 1937–1938 without trial or the accused being present.

Everyday behaviour that departs from what a regime demands, such as avoiding official greetings, missing party meetings, listening to banned music or telling political jokes, without directly opposing the regime.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party, founded as the German Workers' Party in 1919 and led by Adolf Hitler from 1921; Germany's only legal party from July 1933.

Two Nazi laws of 15 September 1935 that took German citizenship from Jews and banned marriage and sexual relations between Jews and other Germans.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941.

A German emergency plan for the Reserve Army to take control in the event of internal unrest, which the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 plot adapted to seize power in Berlin after killing Hitler.

Organised political activity against a government or its policies, usually by groups that want to change or replace it, such as rival party factions, banned parties, army officers, church leaders or exiles.

The section of the German criminal code that made sex between men a crime; the Nazis tightened it in 1935 and used it to imprison tens of thousands of gay men.

The mass non-violent protests in Manila in February 1986 that, after the defection of senior military leaders, forced President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines into exile.

The Nazi special court set up in 1934 to try treason and other political cases, which passed thousands of death sentences, most of them during the Second World War.

Trotsky's argument that the Russian Revolution could survive only if it spread to other countries, so the Soviet state should promote world revolution.

The political movement and ideas of Juan Perón in Argentina, which he called justicialismo: nationalism, state-led industrialisation, social rights for workers and a "third position" between capitalism and communism.

The strikes, sabotage, underground union organisation and illegal publications by which Peronists kept their movement alive while it was banned after 1955.

In Egypt and other Muslim-majority states, the body of law, based on religious law, that governs marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance.

The clause the United States forced into Cuba's 1901 constitution, giving it the right to intervene in Cuba and a naval base at Guantánamo; it was repealed in 1934 except for the base.

A German government of 1930–1933 (under Brüning, Papen and Schleicher) that depended on the president's power to issue decrees under Article 48 instead of on a majority in the Reichstag.

An electoral system in which each party's share of seats matches its share of the vote; in Weimar Germany it gave seats to many small parties and made stable majorities hard to form.

Detention without trial by the Nazi police, made possible by the Reichstag Fire Decree; prisoners were often sent to concentration camps.

The use of legal forms, such as laws, decrees, referendums and court rulings, to remove the legal limits on a regime's power while claiming that everything it does is lawful.

The removal of people regarded as disloyal from an organisation such as a party, army or civil service, by expulsion, imprisonment or execution.

A member of the student and youth groups mobilised by Mao in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to attack party officials, intellectuals and "class enemies".

The name the Gestapo gave to anti-Nazi networks in Germany and occupied Europe that passed information to the Soviet Union and distributed leaflets. The Berlin group was uncovered in 1942 and many of its members were executed.

The Nazi body founded in September 1933 that every writer, journalist, musician, artist and actor had to join to work, allowing the regime to exclude Jews and opponents.

The use of force or the threat of force by a state to silence or destroy opposition, through arrest, imprisonment, execution, deportation, censorship or the use of troops and police.

Deliberate action aimed at weakening or overthrowing a regime, such as distributing leaflets, sabotage, armed revolt, hiding its victims or plotting a coup.

Martin Broszat's term (from the Bavaria Project of the 1970s and 1980s) for the ways in which institutions, communities and groups limited the reach of the Nazi regime and kept their own values, without trying to overthrow it. The word means 'immunity'.

The name taken by the military regime that overthrew Perón in September 1955 and ruled Argentina until 1958. Peronists called it the 'Revolución Fusiladora' (the revolution of the firing squads).

The Cuban campaign of 1968 in which the state took over almost all remaining small private businesses, from shops to street stalls.

A document circulated in 1932 by the Soviet party official Martemyan Ryutin and a small group, which blamed Stalin for the crisis of collectivisation and called for his removal as General Secretary. Its authors were imprisoned and Ryutin was shot in 1937.

Penalties imposed by one or more states on another to force it to change its behaviour, such as restrictions on trade, investment, travel or finance.

A police force whose main task is to protect a regime against its opponents through surveillance, informers, arrest and interrogation, usually outside the control of the courts.

Khrushchev's speech to a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress on 25 February 1956, which condemned Stalin's cult of personality and his purges of party members.

The roughly 17 million urban young people sent to live and work in the countryside in China from 1968, during and after the Cultural Revolution.

A public trial staged for propaganda, in which the verdict is decided in advance and defendants usually confess to invented crimes, such as the Moscow trials of 1936–1938.

The war of 5–10 June 1967 in which Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria and occupied Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Stalin's doctrine, put forward in 1924, that the USSR could build socialism on its own without waiting for revolution in the more advanced countries of Europe.

The official style required of Soviet art and literature from 1934, showing heroic workers and leaders building a socialist future and serving the party's aims.

The severe economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR ended Soviet subsidies and trade.

The Soviet campaign, named after the miner Alexei Stakhanov's record shift of August 1935, that rewarded workers who exceeded their output norms and was used to raise norms for all.

The leisure organisation of the German Labour Front, founded in 1933, which offered workers cheap holidays, cruises, concerts and sport.

The crisis that followed Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, in which Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt but were forced to withdraw.

Mainly middle-class young people in Hamburg and other German cities who defied Nazi culture by listening and dancing to American jazz and swing in the late 1930s and 1940s.

The deliberate use of mass and often arbitrary violence by a state against its own population to create fear and compel obedience.

The state-controlled Protestant organisation of the People's Republic of China, founded in 1954, which cut the churches' links with foreign missions.

The mass mourning for Zhou Enlai in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in early April 1976, which became a protest against the radical leaders around Mao. It was cleared on 5 April and declared counter-revolutionary, a verdict reversed in 1978.

The interpretation, developed by Arendt and by Friedrich and Brzezinski in the 1950s, that Nazi and Soviet rule were maintained from above by ideology, a single party, terror and total control of society.

A form of authoritarian rule that seeks total control over public and private life through an official ideology, a single mass party, terror, a monopoly of the media and state control of the economy. The term was developed by Hannah Arendt (1951) and by Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski (1956).

A Ukrainian nationalist guerrilla army formed in 1942 that fought German and then Soviet forces in western Ukraine until the early 1950s.

Cuban forced-labour camps of 1965–1968 that held men judged unfit for military service, including gay men and religious believers.

The union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser from 1958 to 1961, when Syria left.

An alliance between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party, first in 1923–1927 against the warlords and again from 1937 against Japan.

Lenin's idea of a small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries that leads the working class to revolution because workers alone would not develop revolutionary consciousness.

A campaign led by the Cuban Catholic activist Oswaldo Payá that collected more than 11,000 signatures in 2002 to request a referendum on free speech, free elections and an amnesty for political prisoners, using a clause of the Cuban constitution.

The Egyptian radio station launched in 1953 that broadcast Arab nationalist programmes and Nasser's speeches across the Arab world.

The cheap "people's receiver" radio sold in Nazi Germany from 1933 so that Hitler's speeches and the regime's broadcasts could reach most homes.

"People's community": the Nazi ideal of a racially pure German nation united across classes, regions and religions, from which Jews and others defined as outsiders were excluded.

Soviet workers and peasants promoted in the late 1920s and 1930s into education, management and party and state posts, who formed a loyal new elite under Stalin.

Egypt's largest nationalist party before 1952, founded in 1919 to campaign for independence from Britain. It was dissolved with the other parties in 1953.

The period from about 1916 to 1928 when China was divided among regional military commanders after the collapse of central authority following the fall of the Qing dynasty.

The democratic German state of 1919–1933, named after the town where its constitution was drawn up.

A resistance group of students and a professor at the University of Munich who wrote and distributed six anti-Nazi leaflets in 1942–1943. Its leaders, including Hans and Sophie Scholl, were executed in 1943.

The campaign of study, self-criticism and purges in the CCP in 1942–1944 that made Mao Zedong Thought the party's orthodoxy and removed his rivals' influence.

The women's department of the Soviet Communist Party (1919–1930), which campaigned for women's literacy, rights and political involvement.

Fidel Castro's revolutionary organisation, named after the attack on the Moncada barracks on 26 July 1953, which led the guerrilla war against Batista.