Atlas / Comparisons / Apartheid Nationalism vs Bolsheviks
Apartheid Nationalism and Bolsheviks
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on AU, SC. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, CU, ID, CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | National Party | RSDLP(b) | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | 00 | −09 | 9 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +10 | −05 | 15 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +07 | +08 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +07 | +07 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +10 | −07 | 17 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | +10 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
National Party · EC 00
Coded at the centre, which surprises people in both directions: extensive state ownership and racially reserved employment inside a capitalist economy.
- Documented act or statuteState corporations dominated steel, electricity, transport, oil and armaments.
- Documented act or statuteJob reservation statutes reserved skilled categories for white workers until the 1980s.
RSDLP(b) · EC −09
Banks, land and large industry were taken into state ownership within a year of the seizure of power.
- Documented act or statuteThe Decree on Land abolished private landownership in November 1917.
- Documented act or statuteBanks were nationalised in December 1917 and large-scale industry in June 1918.
National Party · CU +10
At the ceiling: racial classification governed marriage, residence, education and public space by statute.
- Documented act or statuteThe Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts criminalised interracial relationships from 1949.
- Documented act or statuteBantu Education from 1953 prescribed a separate and explicitly inferior curriculum.
RSDLP(b) · CU −05
Culturally radical in the first phase: the most permissive family and gender law then in existence anywhere.
- Documented act or statuteDivorce on demand, civil marriage and the legalisation of abortion were introduced between 1917 and 1920.
- Documented act or statuteThe criminalisation of homosexuality was removed with the tsarist code in 1922.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Apartheid Nationalism
1948–1994 · South Africa
Permanent legal separation of racial groups with political rights reserved to one of them.
Bolsheviks
1903–1924 · Russia
A disciplined vanguard party seizes power in the name of the working class and imposes socialism from above.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas