The concept of totalitarianism in east-central European political thought, with some reflections on its post-Cold War relevance

• Authors: Noël O’Sullivan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Although the concept of totalitarianism played a significant role in political thought in both the United States and western Europe after the Second World War, its value as a tool of political analysis was widely questioned due to the suspicion that it was primarily a cold war ideological construct with little value for comparative study.2 By the 1980s, scepticism about its analytical value had become so deep that Benjamin Barber, a leading American political theorist, concluded that ‘the term would appear to lack any useful social scientific meaning’.3 Among east -central European political thinkers who actually experienced totalitarian rule, in contrast, scepticism of this kind was generally absent in the post- -war decades, and the concept of totalitarianism continued to be assigned a central position in their political vocabulary until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989. In this article I will examine the principal phases through which the concept passed in their thought between 1950 and 1989, before they abandoned it following the velvet revolutions. I will end by considering whether we should now follow most western and east -central European intellectuals in dropping the concept of totalitarianism as little more than a vehicle for ideological prejudices. My conclusion is that a modified version of it which may be termed ‘totalism’ remains relevant today.

• Publisher: Księgarnia Akademicka
• Journal: Politeja : Pismo Wydziału Studiów Miedzynarodowych i Politycznych Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
• Year: 2012
• Issue: 3(21)
• Pages: 49-63

Contributors

author

Noël O’Sullivan

• University of Hull