This article contributes to social systems theory’s (SST) conceptualisation of Soviet-style “organised societies” by reconceptualising Stalinist party purges as a dysfunctional means of system recalibration in the face of external change.
Discourse analysis of key texts focusing on semantic coherence, ideological control and operational closure.
This study considers the appearance and narration of purge as a means of insulating Albania’s party-state system from challenges derived from its environment. Purges allowed the system to internally process external changes without restructuring state-society relations, undermining its operational closure or overhauling its preferred routine.
SST has conceptualised communist states as organised societies. This article extends this conceptualisation and links it more closely with Luhmannian organisational theory to offer a novel conceptualisation of political purges as a despotic and episodic form of management programming.
