Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:21:38.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Question of Totalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Robert C. Tucker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Professor Brzezinski's paper moves along a number of planes of discourse. Some of it is describable as general theory of modern dictatorship, some as analysis of a particular political order, that of Russia, and some as discussion of current Russian political affairs and tendencies. In these necessarily rather brief remarks, I shall be concerned chiefly with issues that arise under the first two headings.

In Section I, where the notion of totalitarianism is expounded as a comprehensive conceptual key to the nature of the Soviet and other like systems (presumably both Communist and Fascist), Professor Brzezinski stresses the difference in kind between “traditional” or “old-fashioned” dictatorship and modern totalitarian dictatorship.

Type
Discussion
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , October 1961 , pp. 377 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kovalevsky, M. M.,Russian Political Institutions (Chicago, 1901), p . 100.Google Scholar

2 In a paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York, September, 1960, a revised version of which was published in American Political Science Review for June, 1961, under the title 'Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement-Regimes.'

3 Kelsen, Hans,The Political Theory of Bolshevism (Berkeley, 1948), p . 6.Google Scholar

4 The historical applicability of the concept of totalitarianism has been argued by Wittfogel, Karl in his Oriental Despotism (New Haven, 1957)Google Scholar and other writings. See also Wolfe, Bertram, “;The Durability of Soviet Despotism,” inSoviet Conduct in World Affairscomp. Dallin, Alexander (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

5 Florinsky, Michael T.,Russia: A History and an Interpretation (2 vols.; New York,1953),II,772.Google Scholar

6 Some of the reasoning underlying this position is presented in the paper cited in note 2.