ABSTRACT

The first world-class historian to argue that the Bolshevik revolution engendered totalitarianisms and left its own terrible mark on the 20th century was the German professor Ernst Nolte. To present his views in a nutshell, one should emphasise that, first, he saw “the Mussolinian fascism” as a “‘reaction’ to the threat of Italian-style Bolshevism, arising out of the war and following more or less the Russian example.” As renowned Polish historian Emanuel Rostworowski wrote in the introduction to his chronicle of the 18th century, “History is like a river where one can delineate the banks, but where cutting into segments the endless flow of causes and effects would be a brutish act indeed”. The “Short 20th Century,” the British historian argued, “virtually coincides with the lifetime of the state born of the October revolution.” Its successive stages included the interwar confrontation between Soviet communism and liberal capitalism, the “temporary and bizarre alliance” and finally the Cold War.