Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

parts;” the result was “an encyclopaedia of totalitarian politics”
rather than a theory of totalitarianism. 16 Other scholars doubted that
politics can be visualized in terms of a static “model,” arguing that
such an analytical construct fails to capture the dynamic nature and
evolution of totalitarian regimes. Finally, others argued that this political
science model of totalitarian regimes placed too much stress
on the nature of the political regime, its official ideology and leader,
at the expense of deeper economic and social structures in fascist
and communist societies. 17
In more recent decades, there have been efforts to overcome
Friedrich and Brzezinski’s “classical” theory of totalitarianism. To this
end, political scientists made concerted efforts to put forward a
more comprehensive definition of totalitarian regimes; to account
not only for the similarities but also for the marked differences between
the outlook and main features of fascist and communist
regimes; and to insert them into a more sophisticated taxonomy of
political regimes. The transition from the unitotalitarian model of fascism
to the more elaborated field of comparative politics is best exemplified
by the work of the leading political scientists Juan J. Linz,
spanning several decades. 18 In his most recent work on the topic,
suggestively titled Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, Linz departed
from the simplistic dichotomy between democratic versus
totalitarian regimes to also include various forms of authoritarian
and dictatorial regimes and thus arrive at a complex taxonomy of
political regimes.
Comparing Historical Case Studies: Nazi Germany and
Stalinist Russia
The totalitarian approach has stimulated comparative historical
analyses of dictatorial regimes of the twentieth century, in an effort
to identify in concrete details their common characteristics but also
17 Groth, “The ‘isms’ in Totalitarianism,” 888-901.
18 See Juan J. Linz: “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in F.I. Greenstein
and N.W. Polsby, (eds.), Handbook of Political Science. Macropolitical Theory,
Vol. 3 (Reading, Mass., 1975), 175-411; “Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism:
My recollections on the Development of comparative politics,” in Alfons
Söllner, Ralf Walkenhaus, Karin Wieland, (eds.), Totalitarismus, eine
Ideengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Ideengeschichte des 20.
Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 1997), 141-157; and Totalitarian and
authoritarian regimes (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 2000).
135 Constantin Iordachi