ABSTRACT

The demise of the Soviet model has thrown new light on some of the most protracted debates about it. It would, in particular, be hard to deny that recent events have strengthened the case for the concept of totalitarianism, but in a rather paradoxical way. In view of the systemic features which became more visible when the regime was put to the test of reform, as well as with regard to the legacy it left behind, those who stressed its extreme, historically novel and socially destructive character were clearly right, and those who tried to subsume the phenomena in question under more conventional categories were just as obviously wrong. But if the notion of totalitarian domination can still serve to highlight the structural logic and the global impact of the Soviet model, the process of decomposition which led to its extinction will now also have to be taken into account. One of the standard objections to theories of totalitarianism has been that they mistake the fiction of total control for historical reality and thus ignore the real changes that have taken place as well as the possibility of future transformations. This is not equally true of all of them; some models of totalitarianism allow for successive phases and alternative versions, and some analysts have noted the close connection between strengths and weaknesses of the regimes in question.1 A revised and updated version would, however, have to go further than the most flexible interpretations could go before the collapse of 1989-91: the task is now to link the longterm self-destructive logic of the model to its ambitions and achievements. If it is true that Soviet-type societies proved less resistant to radical change than most observers had expected, it is no less true that this change took the form of decomposition rather than self-transformation; an adequate theory of totalitarianism would-among other things-have to clarify the causes of the former without losing sight of the obstacles to the latter.