Within the academic context, the concept oftotalitarianism has been applied to severalregimes, with much debate and disagreements, most notably about theSoviet Union,Fascist Italy,Nazi Germany, theEmpire of Japan underKokkashugi, andFrancoist Spain. Totalitarian regimes are usually distinguished fromauthoritarian regimes in the sense that totalitarianism represents an extreme version of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism primarily differs from totalitarianism in that social and economic institutions exist that are not under governmental control.[1]
Because of differing opinions about the definition of totalitarianism and the variable nature of each regime, it is stated in prose the various opinions given by academics, even when those opinions might conflict or be at angles to each other.
TheEncyclopaedia Britannica Online and various academics observed that the policies ofVladimir Lenin, the first leader of theSoviet Union, contributed to the establishment of a totalitarian system in the USSR.[2][3] While some historians, such asLeszek Kołakowski, believedStalinist totalitarianism to be a continuation ofLeninism,[3] and directly called Lenin's government the first totalitarian regime to appear,[4] others includingHannah Arendt argued that there was rupture between Stalinist totaliarianism and Leninism, and that Leninism offered other various outcomes besides Stalinism, including "a mere one-party dictatorship as opposed to full-blown totalitarianism". Arendt believed Stalinist totalitarianism to be a part of a hypernational historically specific phenomenon that also includedNazism.[3]
The debate on whether Lenin's regime was totalitarian is a part of a debate between the totalitarian or traditionalist and neo-traditionalist schools rooted in the early years of theCold War and also described as "conservative" and "anti-Communist" by historianRonald Suny; and the revisionist school, which is represented by such historians asRichard Pipes. To Pipes, not only Stalinism was a mere continuation of Leninism, but more to it, "the Russia of 1917–1924 was no less 'totalitarian' than the Russia of the 1930s"; Pipes compared Lenin toAdolf Hitler and described the former as a precursor of the latter, stating "not only totalitarianism, but Nazism andthe Holocaust has a Russian and a Leninist pedigree". The core idea of the "totalitarian approach" is that theBolshevik Revolution was something artificial and imposed from above by a small group of intellectuals with brute force and "depended on one man",[5][6] and that Soviet totalitarianism resulted from a "blueprint" of the ideology of theBolsheviks, the violentculture of Russia, and supposedly deviant personalities of Bolshevik leaders.[7] The revisionists opposed such claims and put an emphasis onhistory from below and on the genuinely popular nature of the 1917Russian Revolution, paid much more attention to social history as opposed to the traditional approach that centres on politics, ideology, and personalities of the leaders, and tended to see a discontinuity between Leninism and Stalinism, with the worst excesses of the latter being explained by the economic experiments of the late 1920s, the threat of war withNazi Germany, and the personality ofJoseph Stalin. In turn, the traditionalists and neo-traditionalists dismissed such approach emphasising social history asMarxist.[5][6]
According to Kei Hiruta, it is a popular yet contested position in historiography to exclude Fascist Italy from the list of totalitarian regimes. InThe Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),Hannah Arendt disputed that Italy was a totalitarian state,[8][page needed] at least until 1938.[9]
During theSpanish Civil War and the early years of its existence, the regime ofFrancisco Franco embraced the ideal of a totalitarian state propagated by the Italian fascists, the Nazis, and the SpanishFalangists the and applied the term "totalitarian" towards itself when Franco's rhetoric was influenced by the one of Falangism. Franco stressed the "missionary and totalitarian" nature of the new state that was under construction "as in other countries of totalitarian regime", these being Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; the ideologues of Francoism formed a concept of totalitarianism as an essentially Spanish method of state organization. In 1942, Franco stopped using the term towards his regime and called for struggle with "Bolshevist totalitarianism".[10]
The Franco regime was commonly defined as totalitarian and as a Spanish variation offascism until 1964, whenJuan Linz challenged this model and instead described Francoism as "authoritarian" because of its "limited degree of political pluralism" caused by struggle between Francoist families such as Falangists andCarlists within the sole legal partyFET y de las JONS and theMovimiento Nacional and by other such features as lack of totalitarian ideology. The definition proposed by Linz became an object of a major debate among sociologists, political scientists, and historians; some critics felt that this revision could be understood as a form of acquittal of the Franco regime as it focused on the more benevolent character of the regime in its developmental phase and did not concern its early phase (often called "First Francoism"). Later debates focused on fascism rather than arguing whether Francoism was totalitarian; some historians wrote that it was a typical conservativemilitary dictatorship, and contemporary historians stress its fascist component and describe it aspara-fascist or a regime of unfinished fascistization that evolved to a merely authoritarian regime during the Cold War. WhileEnrique Moradiellos contends that "it is now increasingly rare to define Francoism as a truly fascist and totalitarian regime" even if he also writes that the debates on Francoism have not finished yet,[11][12]Ismael Saz notes that "it has also begun to be recognised that" Francoism underwent a "totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian, fascist or quasi-fascist" phase.[13]
The contemporary historians who describe Francoism as totalitarian usually limit such description to the early ten to twenty years of the "First Francoism". Stephen J. Lee limits the totalitarian phase of Francoism to 1939–1949, which he describes as "functionally – but not ideologically – totalitarian", and calls Franco "the closest of authoritarian dictators" to "being totalitarian".[14] Julián Sanz Hoya refutes Linz's model of "limited pluralism" as "lame" and "practically inherent to all political systems", and writes that "considering the totalitarian vocation, it is more than evident that Franco's regime in the first twenty years had totalizing pretensions in relation to social control (including private life, morality, and customs), the monopoly of politics and public space, and even the control of the economy (think of the strong interventionism of autarky)."[15]
Among the arguments introduced by Linz was the reliance of the Franco regime on Catholicism. He writes: "The heteronomous control of the ideological content of Catholic thought by a universal church and specifically by the Pope is one of the most serious obstacles to the creation of a truly totalitarian system by nondemocratic rulers claiming to implement Catholic social doctrine in their states.[16] This argument is also debated on the grounds that "frequent and saturated references to Francoist Catholic humanism, to the primordial sense of human dignity or to the centrality of the person, all coming from Christian theology, could hardly conceal the fact that the individual was only understood as a citizen to the extent of his adherence to the Catholic, hierarchical and economically privatist community that the military uprising had saved",[17] and that "Catholic values that permeated the conservative ideological substratum" were "precisely what was wielded by the Francoist Spanish political doctrine of the late thirties and early forties to justify the need for the constitution of a totalitarian State at the service and expansion of the Catholic religion."[18]
According to theEncyclopaedia Britannica Online, the Soviet Union during theStalinist era, along with Nazi Germany, was a "modern example" of a totalitarian state, being among "the first examples of decentralized or popular totalitarianism, in which the state achieved overwhelming popular support for its leadership". This contrasted with earlier totalitarian states that were imposed on the people,[19] as "every aspect of the Soviet Union's political, economic, cultural, and intellectual life came to be regulated by theCommunist Party in a strict and regimented fashion that would tolerate no opposition".[2] According to Peter Rutland writing in 1993, with thedeath of Stalin, "this was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one."[20] This view was echoed in 1995 by Igor Krupnik who wrote, "The era of 'social engineering' in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself."[21] According toKlaus von Beyme writing in 2014, "The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule."[22]
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin are the two main exemplary cases, on the grounds of comparison of which the concept of totalitarianism was founded.[23] The historians who claim that these dictatorships were not totalitarian often reject or doubt the concept of totalitarianism itself. For example,Eric Hobsbawm rejects the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship because of its operation, although he concedes that Stalin wanted to achieve total control of the population, and this conclusion, as he says, "throws considerable doubt on the usefulness of the term".[24] Such revisionist historians asSheila Fitzpatrick openly rejected both the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship and the term "totalitarianism".[25] The historianRobert Service in his biography of Stalin wrote that "this was not a totalitarian dictatorship as conventionally defined because Stalin lacked the capacity, even at the height of his power, to secure automatic universal compliance with his wishes."[26]
The historianGordon A. Craig disputed that the Third Reich was a totalitarian state, unless "in a limited measure", writing, "Except for the Jews, toward whom Hitler had an obsessive hatred, and former and potential dissidents, and homosexuals and Gypsies, most people, at least until the war years, remained surprisingly unrestrained by state control."[24] Such historians asHans Mommsen andIan Kershaw openly rejected the concept of totalitarianism in analysis of the Third Reich.[23]Stanley Payne argues that "totalitarianism in terms of total control of institutions is a construct that accurately describes only the most extreme Stalinist type of socialist dictatorships (and possibly the final phase of Nazi Germany)."[27]
Totalitarianism has been one of the suggested descriptions for the one-party system that ruled theEmpire of Japan duringWorld War II.[28][page needed] S. J. Lee believes that the ideological base "was traditional", as opposed to "revolutionary" ideologies required by the Western theories of totalitarianim, "even if the methods of communication and control were modern and European", and that the traditional society of Japan was "to a large degree differential", while its institutions remained too elitist and conservative to follow such practices as a "democratic mass mobilization" characteristic of totalitarianism, so he defines this system asauthoritarian as opposed to totalitarian.[29]
Michael Lucken calls Japan "the highly peculiar form of totalitarianism". According to Lucken, "scholars today are hesitant to describe the regime as totalitarian" and "only a handful of scholars specializing in Japan continue somewhat disparately to use the term, while others reject it entirely". He connects it to the policies of the United States during theoccupation of Japan after World War II. While the American authorities labelled Germany "totalitarian" and thus authorizing the term, they never officially did it to Japan since this would makeHirohito responsible for the war and war crimes, which contradicted the plans ofDouglas MacArthur; Arendt further contributed to the exclusion of Japan from the list of totalitarian regimes by formulating the mainstream criterion of totalitarianism unapplicable to Japan. As her theories gained less influence, the Japanese historians find the term applicable, which creates a discrepancy between Japanese and Western historiographies. According to Lucken, "The concept of totality in Japanese wartime thinking did not refer to an enclosed whole, like a set of marbles in a bag. On the contrary, it was an open and organic whole that resists any narrow definition. Consequently, if we are able to speak of Japanese totalitarianism, it was all the more total for having consistently resisted such a label."[30]
Various academics have describedBa'athist Iraq as a repressive totalitarian state.[31][32][33] His regime was notorious for its repressive tactics. These includedwidespread surveillance,torture, andextrajudicial killings.[34][35] Numerous cases of human rights abuses committed by his government were documented by human rights organizations.[36] Saddam's regime suppressed political opposition through a combination of violence, intimidation, and censorship.[35] Freedom of speech and freedom of the press were severely curtailed, and political opponents were often executed or imprisoned.[37] He initiated three military conflicts, including theIran–Iraq War, theIraqi invasion of Kuwait, and theGulf War.[38] These actions led to heavy casualties and widespread regional instability.[39]Saddamism has been described by critics as a mix of "SunniArab nationalism, confusedStalinism, andfascist zeal for the fatherland and its leader".[40] Although Saddam is often described as atotalitarian leader, Joseph Sassoon notes that there are important differences between Saddam's repression and the totalitarianism practiced byAdolf Hitler andJoseph Stalin, particularly with regard tofreedom of movement andfreedom of religion.[31]
Sondrol describedFidel Castro as a "totalitarian dictator",[41] Sondrol suggested that in leading "a political system largely [of] his own creation and bearing his indelible stamp", Castro's leadership style warranted comparisons with totalitarian leaders likeMao Zedong,Hideki Tojo,Joseph Stalin,Adolf Hitler, andBenito Mussolini.[41]
Other governments which have been described as totalitarian includeChina underMao Zedong,[42][43][44]Cambodia underPol Pot,[45] andNorth Korea under theKim family.[46][47][48]
after 1953 ...This was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one.
The era of 'social engineering' in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself.
The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule.
First, Faust totally ignores the economy in his analysis. This oversight is remarkable given his attempt to trace how the regime became totalitarian, which, by definition, encompasses all facets of life. ... Second, the comparison with Stalin or Hitler is weak when one takes into consideration how many Iraqis were allowed to leave the country. Although citizens needed to undergo a convoluted and bureaucratic procedure to obtain the necessary papers to leave the country, the fact remains that more than one million Iraqis migrated from Iraq from the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 until the US-led invasion in 2003. Third, religion under Stalin did not function in the same manner as it did in Iraq, and while Faust details how the Shi'a were not allowed to engage in some of their ceremonies, the average Iraqi was allowed to pray at home and in a mosque. ... it is correct that the security services kept a watch on religious establishments and mosques, but the Iraqi approach is somewhat different from that pursued by Stalin's totalitarianism.