ABSTRACT
The concept revived during the 1970s and 1980s, as Soviet and Eastern European dissidents and reformers made totalitarianism the 'common denominator' for the opposition throughout Eastern Europe. Totalitarianism has always been a protean term, capable of combining and recombining meanings in different contexts and in new and ever-changing political constellations. Todorov scrupulously avoids the word 'libera', but this also creates the problem that he does not distinguish between liberalism and democracy as 'opposites' of totalitarianism. The protracted debates over whether to act militarily to prevent what might have become the first European genocide since the Second World War, it seemed, led to a confrontation between German anti-fascism and French anti-totalitarianism. Totalitarianism was by no means a concept forged during and for the Cold War, but it returned with new vigour before the postwar deterioration of US relations with the Soviets.
