ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how such wartime exigency measures became the permanent peacetime arrangements of totalitarian regimes and how this differed from proto-totalitarianism. It outlines the subtotalitarianism that supervened in Russia after Stalin's death—as it would in China also, after Mao's demise. These are examples of the penultimate stage in the genetic evolution of totalitarianism and its various mutations, which can be followed by a final stage. The chapter describes as post-totalitarianism, like that which ensued in Russia after 1989 but has not yet reached China, if it ever will. In this way, through a confused tangle of adventitious circumstances, the two proto-totalitarian regimes were installed in Russia and Italy, and a third followed not much later in Germany. These were the early forms of proto-totalitarianism that had to undergo a further metamorphosis before they could emerge as totalitarianism proper.
