ABSTRACT
Theories of totalitarianism have sprung from the emergence of a historical phenomenon experienced as radically new and unique. This perception was first displayed in reference to the ‘total state’ in Fascist Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. Later, the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag made the focus of analyses shift towards extreme violence and the dynamic of extermination; Hannah Arendt’s work is still the outstanding example. Yet the longer the Soviet system survived Stalinism and its Nazi antipode, the less theory concentrated on mass murder. Instead, the totality of political power and social control became central. Here, Carl Friedrich’s ideal-typical model exercised considerable influence. It too, however, was soon confronted with a twofold critique. On the one hand, it was charged with being static and therefore unable to explain the changes taking place in the Soviet hemisphere since the 1950s. On the other hand, as a general model primarily focusing on totalitarian institutions, it could not grasp crucial differences between Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism and post-Stalinism.
