Totalitarianism in The Soviet Union

Was the Soviet Union Totalitarian?
The View of Soviet Dissidents and the Reformers of

the Gorbachev Era
Author(s): Jay Bergman
Source: Studies in East European Thought, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 247-281
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20099686
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JAY BERGMAN
WAS THE SOVIET UNION TOTALITARIAN?

THE VIEW OF SOVIET DISSIDENTS AND
THE REFORMERS OF THE GORBACHEV ERA
ABSTRACT. The article explains why Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the
Gorbachev era chose to characterize the Soviet system as totalitarian. The dissi
dents and the reformers strongly disagreed among themselves about the origins of
Soviet totalitarianism. But both groups stressed the effects of totalitarianism on the
individual personality; in doing so, they revealed themselves to be the heirs of the
tsarist intelligentsia. Although the concept of totalitarianism probably obscures
more than it clarifies when it is applied to regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet,
the decision of the dissidents and the reformers to use the term enabled them to
clarify their own values and the reasons they felt compelled to criticize the Soviet
Union and to call for its radical reform.
KEY WORDS: Gorbachev-era reformers, Perestroika, Soviet dissidents, Soviet

Union, totalitarianism
INTRODUCTION
In their efforts to explain the political system in the Soviet Union

that oppressed them, Soviet dissidents of the 1960s and 1970s often
borrowed concepts and categories originally developed in the West.
In the Gorbachev era that followed, persons both inside and outside
the Soviet government who agitated for its radical reform did the
same. In their writings, these two groups of critics characterized the
Soviet Union variously as fascist, state capitalist, Bonapartist, Ther
midorean, and authoritarian; on occasion they described the regime
as a modernizing despotism that, by adopting Western capitalism and
technology, might be transformed into a pluralistic democracy com
plete with interest groups, a market economy, and a functional civil
society. All of these concepts and categories are basically Western in
derivation. Because the Soviet leadership from Stalin onward delib
erately limited the lexicon of political analysis to terminology drawn
exclusively from an ideology, Marxism-Leninism, that was largely
Studies in East European Thought 50: 247-281,1998.

? 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
248 JAY BERGMAN
useless in explaining the actual phenomena to which it was applied,

anyone in the Soviet Union who wished to understand its history and
politics had to look outside his own political system for the analytical
vocabulary he needed. Given their intellectual origins in the intel
ligentsia, it was only natural that, like Herzen and Chernyshevskii
a century earlier, the dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev
era should have found this vocabulary in the West.
One of the terms these groups often borrowed from the West
was "totalitarianism." Although the adjective "totalitarian" was first
used in the 1920s by opponents of Mussolini's dictatorship in Italy,
after World War II social scientists and historians in England and
America applied the term mainly to Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union, which they considered the principal examples of a new type
of tyranny unique in both the nature and the extent of its brutality.l
So distinctive were these regimes in the enormity of the power they
exercised that one could legitimately speak of the emergence in the
twentieth century of something called "totalitarianism," a generic
concept applicable to societies in which politics was paramount,
privacy nonexistent, and the individual essentially condemned to
eternal powerlessness by the absence of institutions protecting him
from the state. Because despots in previous centuries did not have
the same technology at their disposal, nothing like totalitarianism
had ever existed before, and short of military defeat by an external
enemy, totalitarian regimes were more or less impregnable. From
the perspective of such theorists as Hannah Arendt, Carl Friedrich,
and Zbigniew Brzezinski, totalitarianism was destined never to
disappear.2
While convinced that something called totalitarianism actually
existed, these theorists stressed different aspects of it in explaining
its novelty and uniqueness. Friedrich and Brzezinski, for example,
considered totalitarian regimes distinctive mostly in the sheer power
they accumulated, and in the extraordinarily brutal methods they
employed in exercising it.3 Arendt, however, stressed the ideolog
ical aspect of totalitarianism. In her view, totalitarian regimes relied
on ideology not merely for legitimacy but for an explanation of
human behavior so all-encompassing and infallible that it became
in some sense even more real to those who accepted it than the
social and political realities it purported to explain. The cost of this
WAS THE SOVIET UNION TOTALITARIAN? 249
in human suffering, she believed, was enormous. As a result of

the omnipresence and purported omniscience of ideology, all that
linked the individual to others in a totalitarian society was a shared
allegiance to an intellectual system claiming to explain everything
in terms of preconceived ideas that were empirically untestable.
With their cognitive abilities in this way impaired by the state,
human beings who were living under totalitarianism were rendered
totally defenseless against the malevolent whims and idiosyncra
cies of the dictator, a predicament inconceivable even in the most
thoroughgoing despotisms of earlier centuries.4 Perhaps because the
dissidents, as the product of a regime that sought inspiration and
legitimacy in ideology, were unusually sensitive to the ways in which
ideology could be a substitute for rational inquiry, they tended, in
using the concept of totalitarianism, to be especially mindful of how
destructive of the individual's autonomy and freedom an excessive
reliance on ideology could be.
Popularized by novelists such as George Orwell and Aldous
Huxley, this nightmarish vision of what might befall all of humanity
if totalitarianism were not somehow contained or eradicated quickly
became part of the mythology of the Cold War.5 For as long as the
Cold War continued, one of the most effective criticisms anyone
in the West could level at the Soviet Union was that it was totali
tarian. Even after de-Stalinization under Khrushchev seemed to call
into question the claim that totalitarian regimes could never change,
much less reform themselves, the totalitarian school remained for
many years the dominant one in Western Sovietology. Its adherents
either denied that de-Stalinization had altered the Soviet system in
any fundamental way, or claimed that Stalin had never actually exer
cised total power, which in any case was a practical impossibility. In
Walter Laqueur's succinct defense of the term, totalitarianism should
not be construed to imply that Stalin determined school curricula in
Uzbekistan.6 But while a totalitarian dictator like Hitler or Stalin
might not be able to do everything he wished to do, he certainly
could do anything he wished to do, and all significant decisions
were his, and his alone, to make.7 By including in their analyses
the caveat that the notion of total power was never meant to be
taken literally, theorists of totalitarianism could still argue plausibly
in the 1960s and early 1970s that the Soviet Union was totalitarian,
250 JAY BERGMAN
and that the concept of totalitarianism was worth preserving. To the

assertion that the Soviet Union was no longer totalitarian because
the Soviet government no longer practiced mass terror, these theo
rists could reasonably reply that the application of terror under Stalin
made its repetition under Khrushchev and Brezhnev unnecessary.
Not surprisingly, for most of the Cold War the Soviet leader
ship either ignored the whole concept of totalitarianism or bitterly
condemned it as a pejorative used by enemies of the Soviet Union
to attack it. While Soviet encyclopedias and political dictionaries
had no entries for totalitarianism in the 1930s and 1940s, beginning
in the 1950s these works essentially equated it with fascism. The
BoVshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, for example, in its 1977 edition
described totalitarianism as "the official ideology of fascism," adding
that "the struggle with the ideology and practice of totalitarianism
is one of the most important tasks of the communist movement and
of Marxist-Leninist social science."8 But Soviet leaders themselves
usually avoided the term in attacking the West, preferring epithets
like "bourgeois imperialism" that derived from the official Marxist
Leninist ideology they professed. Prior to the dissidents, virtually
the only Russians who used the term analytically were Trotskii and
Menshevik ?migr?s, who as a result of living in the West were fairly
familiar with the terminology that informed the political debates
there. In the journals they edited, Mensheviks such as Abramovich,
Dan, and Nikolaevskii published not only their own reflections on
totalitarianism but those of such non-Russian socialists as Rudolf
Hilferding and Angelo Tasca, both of whom unequivocally called
the Soviet Union or various aspects of it totalitarian.9 Generally
speaking, the Mensheviks considered totalitarianism a threat to civi
lization itself; wherever it existed, the humanistic values they upheld
had been systematically eradicated. But in attempting to understand
how totalitarianism developed, they focused primarily on Russia,
where they believed a proletarian dictatorship that once retained the
capacity to reform itself had degenerated into a bureaucratic one
dependent for its survival on the use of terror. In the way the Men
sheviks used the term, totalitarianism was mostly a synonym for an
aberrant form of Russian socialism that had gone from bad to worse,
rather than a generic label for a number of political systems sharing
certain distinctive characteristics.10 As for Trotskii, the uncertainty
he revealed when he tried to explain Stalin and Stalinism by using

the vocabulary of the French Revolution characterized as well his
views on totalitarianism. If in 1936, in The Revolution Betrayed, he
proclaimed the Soviet Union totalitarian as a result of Stalin upset
ting the delicate equilibrium that existed previously between the
Soviet bureaucracy (which he said was totalitarian) and the Com
munist Party (which he said was not), in 1939, in "The USSR in
War," he made the degeneration of the Soviet Union into totalitari
anism conditional upon the failure of the international proletariat to
overthrow Stalin. In other words, a political system that was totali
tarian in 1936 was no longer totalitarian three years later. Typically,
Trotskii never bothered to explain what caused him to change his
mind in this regard, or even to acknowledge that he had changed his
mind at all.11
Neither Trotskii nor the Mensheviks left the dissidents and the
reformers of the Gorbachev era a coherent intellectual legacy that
would help them analyze the concept of totalitarianism. In fact, there
were good reasons why the dissidents, at least, might not even want
to apply the term to the Soviet Union. Calling the Soviet Union total
itarian was tantamount to acknowledging that resisting it was futile,
and that the likelihood of its reforming itself was nil. Furthermore,
using an abstraction like totalitarianism to explain the emergence and
evolution of Soviet communism had the effect of absolving Soviet
leaders of responsibility for the crimes they committed: if the Soviet
Union was totalitarian, then the ghastly atrocities that occurred there
- the establishment of labor camps, collectivization, mass terror, the
deportation of national minorities, and so on - could be attributed
not to the actual human beings who carried out these atrocities but
to whatever it was that caused totalitarianism to appear in Russia
in the first place. And finally, by ascribing the essential features of
the Soviet Union to a phenomenon whose origins were traceable
to factors of broadly European dimensions, anyone wishing also to
explain the origins of communism in Russia would be likely to mini
mize the role of national history and culture. Perhaps in recognition
of this, Roi Medvedev and several other dissidents generally avoided
the term, and one dissident, who chose to express his opinions on
the subject anonymously, argued strenuously that, for all its faults,
the Soviet Union was never totalitarian.12
252 JAY BERGMAN
Still, there were compelling reasons for the dissidents to embrace

the term. For those like Solzhenitsyn who were anxious to exonerate
Russian culture and the Russian people of any blame for Soviet
communism, calling the Soviet system totalitarian made it easier to
attribute all that had happened in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolu
tion to external influences such as the Enlightenment, Marxism,
and Western technology. If Soviet communism was a manifestation
of something that was truly transnational, then nothing that was
Russian could fairly be blamed for it. But even dissidents who did
not share Solzhenitsyn's views in this regard would find the notion
of totalitarianism very useful. Given the official view of totalitari
anism as the functional equivalent of fascism, by calling the Soviet
Union totalitarian, the dissidents would in effect be calling it fascist.
And given the elaborate cult the Soviet leadership had fashioned
around the struggle the Soviet people waged in World War II against
the Nazis - whom the government always referred to as fascists -
nothing would enrage the leadership more than the implication that
the regime they headed was in its essential features hardly different
from the Nazis'.13 For the dissidents, ascertaining whether or not
the Soviet Union was totalitarian was not the academic exercise it
was for Western scholars who could evaluate the Soviet system with
their personal safety assured, and one could forgive the dissidents
for occasionally using a descriptive term like totalitarianism as a
polemical device.
THE SOVIET DISSIDENTS
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Soviet dissidents openly called

the Soviet Union, both under Stalin and afterwards, totalitarian. For
example, N. Pechal'nik claimed in 1972 that the Soviet people were
presently "pressed together in the iron grip of totalitarian despotism";
the year before, V. Skorbiashchii had decried the Soviet Union as "the
hellish cauldron of a totalitarian state."14 In 1968 Piotr Grigorenko, in
an appeal to participants in a conference in Budapest, stated that the
Soviet Union in the Stalin era was totalitarian and that because of this
"the whole life of Soviet society was monstrously centralized"; eight
years later, in eulogizing Anatolii Kosterin, who, like Grigorenko,
had championed the cause of the Crimean Tatars, he called upon the
mourners who had assembled at the funeral to wage "an uncompro

mising struggle against [Soviet] totalitarianism, which hides behind
the mask of socialist democracy."15 In his long career as a dissident,
Andrei Sakharov used the terms totalitarian and totalitarianism fairly
often. In 1978, for example, he described the Soviet Union as "a total
itarian state"; also in 1978 he said that Marxism-Leninism had been
transformed by the Soviet regime into "an ideology of a party-state
totalitarianism"; and in 1980 he termed the Soviet Union "a closed
totalitarian state."16 While acknowledging some diminution in the
severity of repression since the Stalin era, most of the dissidents who
considered the existing Soviet system totalitarian did so because the
Communist Party, in their view, retained its monopoly of power;
because the Brezhnev regime did not engage in vast projects of social
engineering, in some respects it was more effective than Stalin's in
enforcing its will. According to Valentin Turchin, the Soviet Union
in the 1960s and 1970s practiced a kind of "steady-state totalitar
ianism" distinguishable from the more "transformationist" version
that preceded it by what Turchin described as its relative rationality
and efficiency. In Turchin's words, "the authorities have learned
how to combat ideas with a minimum of bloodshed."17 Writing in
1990, just prior to the final collapse of the Soviet Union, Vladimir
Bukovskii made the same distinction Turchin did, describing the
difference between Stalinist and post-Stalinist totalitarianism in the
Soviet Union in the following way:
[After Stalin's death] the system still persisted and even continued to expand its
influence. If nothing else, the sheer inertia of this giant, its ideological rigidity,
the absence of any feedback mechanism in its structure (except for the automatic
suppression of dissent), as well as the self-interest of the ruling elite, still kept
it going. Propaganda replaced achievements, coercion replaced belief, fear and
apathy replaced revolutionary fervor, while subversion, manipulation, or military
expansion were employed to promote "inevitable" socialist revolutions abroad.18
In a lengthy article he wrote in 1973, K. Vol'nyi not only termed

the Soviet Union totalitarian, but claimed as well that "Bolshevik
totalitarianism bears responsibility and should be held accountable
for all the sacrifices it has imposed on the people of Russia beginning
with the first soldiers killed in the storming of the Winter Palace in
the fall of 1917."19
There can be no doubt that "totalitarian" and "totalitarianism"
were an integral part of the polemical vocabulary of Soviet dissi
254 JAY BERGMAN
dence.20 Many of the dissidents who used the term did so casually,
almost promiscuously, as when Kukobaka blamed totalitarianism for
the chronic alcoholism in Soviet society that any fairminded observer
would readily acknowledge was a problem in Russia long before
totalitarianism or Bolshevism ever existed.22 For many dissidents,
totalitarianism was a term so self-evidently descriptive of the Soviet
system that they felt no need to define it or to indicate its identifying
characteristics. The few who did so usually limited their conclusions
to generalities. In distinguishing a totalitarian regime from an ordi
nary dictatorship, Bukovskii stated that a totalitarian regime was one
that "controls all spheres of human activity."22 Anatolii Fedos'ev, a
Soviet scientist who defected to England in 1969, defined a totali
tarian state simply as one in which "all aspects of life are planned."23
To some dissidents, such as Bukovskii and Alexander Shtromas,
totalitarianism was synonymous with socialism, while to others,
such as E. Petrov and la. Gurevich, it was the antithesis of genuine
socialism, its survival in the Soviet Union made possible by what
they called the "nationalistic imperialism" of the Soviet govern
ment.24 For Vasilii Barats, totalitarianism entailed complete control
by a political elite over "all aspects of life and human activity," a
definition Ivan Ruslanov amended slightly by stressing the ability
of a totalitarian state to control the dissemination of information.25
If some dissidents, such as Shtromas, considered totalitarianism a
particular way of organizing the state - an approach very similar to
Friedrich's and Brzezinski's - several others, including Alexander
Orlov, followed Arendt in claiming that an emphasis on ideology
was precisely what distinguished totalitarian regimes from others,
and that the kind of ideology they professed was what distinguished
one totalitarian regime from another. Stalin's totalitarianism was
different from Hitler's, Orlov suggested, in its hostility - which
Orlov ascribed exclusively to ideology - to private enterprise and
private property.26
But Orlov's efforts to understand totalitarianism theoretically was
a notable exception to the practice the dissidents generally followed
of using the term to describe a political system they knew mostly
from personal experience. In reading what the dissidents wrote and
said about totalitarianism, one senses that far from helping them to
comprehend those aspects of the Soviet system that still perplexed
them, the term merely confirmed what they already knew about the
system from having been arrested, harassed, stripped of their jobs,
exiled, jailed, consigned to psychiatric hospitals, or sentenced to
several years of confinement in a labor camp. Totalitarianism was
simply a convenient label to apply to their own experiences, a term
that lent a patina of intellectual respectability to their criticisms of
a regime they detested. Instead of facilitating analysis of the Soviet
Union, totalitarianism, as the dissidents used the term, seemed to
obviate the need for it.
To be sure, the dissidents engaged in spirited debate over the
origins of totalitarianism, both as a generic phenomenon and in
Russia. Solzhenitsyn, of course, considered totalitarianism in Russia
and elsewhere the result of Western rationalism and the Enlighten
ment.27 Along these same lines, in Iz-podglyb, the celebrated collec
tion of essays Solzhenitsyn edited, Vadim Borisov claimed that
totalitarianism was caused by a form of "rationalistic humanism"
that separated man from everything that gave meaning to life, partic
ularly religion and nationality.28 Approximately a decade after the
apperance of Iz-pod glyb, Lev Timofeev stated simply that Soviet
totalitarianism came directly from "the bloody idea" of The Commu
nist Manifesto.29 But other dissidents, far less critical of the West
than Solzhenitsyn, disagreed. In their view, Russian culture and
history could not escape responsibility for Soviet totalitarianism.
Leonid Pliushch, for example, considered it the result of what he
said was the propensity of the Russian people for barbarism.30 So
did Vol'nyi, who bemoaned the longstanding "submissiveness" and
"spiritual meshchanstvo" he claimed to see in the Russian national
character.31 And so, too, with a venom one might ascribe to his
ethnic heritage, did the Latvian dissident who in 1986 pseudony
mously published an essay about the Soviet Union in which he
tried to elucidate the historical origins of its particular brand of
totalitarianism:
In Russia there has never existed any system of laws that guaranteed the inviola
bility of the individual personality and defended the individual from the tyranny
of state power. Nor have there ever been any laws that explicitly controlled and
limited the actions of the supreme rulers, including the Tsars_It is evident
that there is an intimate relationship between Russian despotism and communist
totalitarianism_In Russia communist totalitarianism successfully continued the
tradition of Russian autocracy.32
256 JAY BERGMAN
While acknowledging that certain scientific and pseudo-scientific

ideas of the nineteenth century, specifically Darwinism and Marxism,
helped to create in Europe an intellectual climate conducive to
the emergence of totalitarianism, Valentin Turchin strongly crit
icized Solzhenitsyn for ascribing totalitarianism to science and
reason. The problem, Turchin insisted, was not that science and
reason were somehow complicit in the moral nihilism Solzhenitsyn
considered the essence of totalitarianism. Rather, it was that ideolo
gies like Marxism and Darwinism that embodied a certain scientism
and rationalism were transformed by some of its more unscrupu
lous proponents into pseudo-ideologies like Marxism-Leninism and
Nazism that totalitarian dictatorships could use to justify their assault
on science and reason.33
But for all the energy they expended in assessing blame for totali
tarianism, the dissidents were far more concerned with the effects of
totalitarianism on the Soviet people - on their individual autonomy,
their spiritual essence, their capacity for moral discernment, and their
ability to think rationally and coherently about the world around
them. For the dissidents, totalitarianism was a moral abomination,
and an incalculable tragedy for the Soviet people, precisely because
it created in nearly everyone who experienced it a spiritual and
ethical void in which everything the Soviet dissidents valued most
was strikingly absent. Of all the evils totalitarianism generated, the
worst, as far as the dissidents were concerned, was the destruction
of the individual personality and the principle of individual moral
responsibility.
In the dissidents' view, this produced a moral and spiritual
paralysis in the Soviet people that allowed them to accept without
question the mass exterminations of the Stalin era. As Vasilli
Grossman described this psychology of capitulation in Life and Fate,
the passivity with which the Soviet people endured the mass terror of
the 1930s was nearly as appalling as the terror itself, a reflection not
only of Stalin's using the fear of denunciation to preclude the mutual
trust resistance requires, but of the capacity of the system, in barely
two decades, to render the Soviet people so passive, inert, and funda
mentally childlike in their acceptance of authority that resistance
was completely unthinkable.34 As noted by another dissident, who
chose to express his views pseudonymously, Soviet totalitarianism
succeeded in reducing the Soviet people to "the level of kinder

garten children": having yielded to the state complete sovereignty
over their own lives, they lacked the intellectual and psychological
wherewithal to ascertain and assert their own interests.35 As Valentin
Turchin pointed out, the essence of totalitarianism was its denial of
free will and the repudiation of "the individual, human personality";
by establishing "a standardized, ideological system," totalitarianism
caused "the total destruction of the individual."36
As the dissidents viewed it, totalitarianism left the individual
spiritually deformed and disabled, lacking the capacity to render
moral judgments. To this extent, totalitarianism was not so much a
model for a particularly brutal kind of politics, but a concept that
captured the essence of a relationship between the individual and the
state in which the state was the sole repository of ethical standards.
This lachrymose conviction, which often appeared in the articles and
essays the dissidents produced, seemed to be at the core of their moral
objections to totalitarianism. M. Prishelets, for example, commented
in an article he wrote for Luch svobody that totalitarianism was abhor
rent precisely because it succeeded in "morally corrupting the people
who are subordinated to it."37 In an article in Demokrat, a dissident
who preferred to remain anonymous condemned totalitarianism in
the Soviet Union for having engendered in the Soviet people "an
incomplete, asocial, and anticultural type of popular spirit with a
significantly underdeveloped sense of moral authority"; as a result
of the moral apathy totalitarianism engendered, the Soviet people
were "internally severely ill, even though externally they appear
active and well."38 And in the same article, cited above, in which
he traced Soviet totalitarianism to the October Revolution, Vol'nyi
stated unequivocally that the worst aspect of totalitarianism was its
destruction of the personal integrity and character of the individual:
The political order [in the Soviet Union] is the most somber form of totalitarian
despotism, which, with the assistance of a "chekocracy," suppresses the slightest
gleam of free thought; it persecutes and destroys the intellect, honor, and
conscience of society; it corrupts the majority of those who live in it through
fear, greed, mutual distrust, violence, ignorance, and slavery.39
According to the dissidents, this destruction of individualism and

individuality was not just a consequence or byproduct of totalitar
ianism, but one of its foremost objectives, perhaps its very raison
d'?tre. The accretion of political power, the radical transformation
258 JAY BERGMAN
of society, the centrality of ideology, the control of information and

mass communication, and the perversion of language that Western
students of totalitarianism were inclined to consider the paradigmatic
aspects of totalitarianism were certainly characteristic of totalitarian
regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet. But in addition to creating a
new social order on the basis of predetermined ideological specifica
tions, totalitarian regimes, in the view of the dissidents, sought most
of all the transformation - really the degradation and spiritual anni
hilation - of the individual himself. In a sense, the individual living
under totalitarianism was expected to relinquish to the state not only
complete control over his personal environment - where he lived
and worked, who his friends were, and the kinds of organizations he
could join - but also the very determination of the kind of human
being he should be. Without any spiritual core, lacking all capacity
for moral judgment, and denied the freedom to create for himself a
personal life that was beyond the domain of the state, the individual
who lived under totalitarianism was hardly a human being at all. In
the words of Evgenii Barabanov:
The totalitarian system tries to imitate the democratic system with all its might.
It attempts to convince everybody that it is built on a series of independent
instances, each of which, supposedly, represents some opinion, culture, or even
expressions of human personality. In actuality it unceremoniously monopolizes
the right to form the convictions of the personality and becomes the sole channel
for their self-expression. In doing so it rejects its dignity and sovereignty_All
manifestations of [the individual's] spirit are known in advance. Its relationships
with the world are already regulated, its creative searchings are predetermined.
Independent judgment and personal responsibility are, in such cases, viewed as
treason, as an evil destruction of a supra-personal "pre-established harmony."40
So long as they stressed this point, the Soviet dissidents were able to
consider totalitarianism not merely a matter of politics and ideology,
but also a psychological phenomenon, a way of creating in people
a distinctive mentalit? that, from the perspective of a totalitarian
regime, did not merely facilitate political and ideological objectives,
but was truly an end in itself.
However, the danger totalitarianism posed to humanity was not
limited to the regimes in which it already existed. As the dissidents
explained it, totalitarianism, particularly Soviet totalitarianism, was
inherently expansionist. As a result, states that were not presently
totalitarian might conceivably become so if they did not respond to
totalitarianism vigorously. According to Sakharov, who stressed the
point repeatedly, "the most insidious and difficult-to-avert danger

threatening the free and progressive development of mankind is the
spread of totalitarianism"; since the 1950s "the totalitarian-socialist
system has been on a global offensive."41 Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
who disagreed with Sakharov on many other issues that concerned
the dissidents, in this case agreed with him completely:
[N]o single country is enough to satisfy a totalitarian communist regime.
Communism is a type of virtually incomprehensible regime that is not inter
ested in the flourishing of a country, or in the health and welfare of its people.
On the contrary, communism sacrifices both people and country to achieve its
external goals.42
In a similar vein, the author of an article in Demokrat who chose not

to reveal his identity noted that "as long as totalitarian regimes exist,
the danger of aggressive, bloody wars will emerge in one place or
another," while Alexander Orlov termed "a dangerous illusion" the
belief that Bolshevik totalitarianism would never come to the West
because the people there were somehow immune to it.43 In Luch
svobody V Severnyi noted simply that the Soviet Union became
totalitarian in 1918 and that the Western powers thereafter were in
the sordid business of appeasing it.44
Although there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their belief
that the threat totalitarianism posed was a global one, it is also
true that by calling Soviet totalitarianism expansionist the dissi
dents afforded themselves a measure of psychological comfort and
reassurance: if Soviet totalitarianism threatened everyone, then the
dissidents were fighting the Soviet system not just on behalf of the
Soviet people but on behalf of all people, and for that reason foreign
countries, particularly Western ones, might offer the dissidents valu
able assistance. Of course the chances of this happening would be
greater if the dissidents could somehow make their struggle known
outside the Soviet Union - hence the numerous appeals, proclama
tions, and open letters they directed to foreign governments, organi
zations, and individuals. In Sakharov's words, "the human-rights
movement in the USSR is part of a world-wide movement to resist
totalitarianism."45 In short, by calling the Soviet Union totalitarian,
and by characterizing Soviet totalitarianism as expansionist, the
dissidents were universalizing not only their own struggle against the
Soviet authorities, but also the ethical principles, most notably the
belief in the inviolability of the individual personality, on which their
260 JAY BERGMAN
struggle was based. And by universalizing the values and principles

they championed, the dissidents could lay claim to a moral and philo
sophical absolutism entirely consistent with their intellectual origins
in the intelligentsia.
But what was the likelihood Western governments would respond
to the dissidents' appeals? And if they did, would it make any differ
ence? Was not Soviet totalitarianism, by destroying the capacity
of the Soviet people to function independently and autonomously,
indestructible? While the dissidents, by and large, were unsure of
how to answer the first question, to the second question most of
them responded affirmatively, which in turn caused a few of them
to conclude, admittedly with a certain bravado, that far from being
indestructible, Soviet totalitarianism was in fact exceedingly vulner
able, and possibly even on the verge of collapse. When, in the 1970s
and early 1980s, Sakharov pleaded with Western governments to
pressure the Soviet Union to reform itself, or at least to resist Soviet
expansionism, he did so precisely because he believed a closed polit
ical system like the Soviet one to be vulnerable to external forces. So,
too, did Feodor Zniakov, who as early as 1966 claimed that foreign
military intervention might break what he called "the membrane" of
Soviet totalitarianism, which in turn might inspire the Soviet people
to revolt openly against their own government.46
If the dissidents were successful in increasing it, Western hos
tility to the Soviet Union would alleviate their political isolation,
cause the Soviet leadership to stop persecuting them, and weaken
the regime sufficiently so that the Soviet people, their discontent
informed by what the dissidents could teach them, would finally be
emboldened to resist it. Provided the dissidents did not bicker exces
sively among themselves - a caveat they issued frequently and with
great conviction - then Vol'nyi's prediction that "our struggle with
Bolshevik totalitarianism ... will end in victory" would eventually
come true.47 This, at any rate, is what the dissidents anticipated.
Remarkably, it is very similar to how Lenin viewed the Bolsheviks'
prospects in 1917: just as Lenin thought that proletarian revolu
tions in Western Europe would bring to power governments there
whose assistance would ensure the Bolsheviks' survival once they
removed the Provisional Government from power, so, too, over a
half-century later, did the dissidents believe that Western support
would be instrumental in their effort to destroy the very regime the

Bolsheviks created. For all its awesome power, despite everything it
had done to eliminate the individuality and autonomy of the Soviet
people, because of Western opposition Soviet totalitarianism would
eventually collapse, just like the tsarist autocracy that preceded it.
However desperate their predicament might have seemed to them
at the time, the dissidents were able to comfort themselves with the
conviction that no regime, not even a totalitarian one, could last
forever.
THE REFORMERS OF THE GORBACHEV ERA
The reformers of the Gorbachev era - by whom are meant those

persons inside and outside the Soviet government who from 1985 to
1991 advocated its systemic reform - were in many ways the heirs
of the dissidents. Not only did these reformers come predominantly
from the same social stratum, the educated elite, that produced the
dissidents, but several of them, notably Sakharov, Vitalii Korotich,
and Grigorii Pomerants, had themselves been dissidents prior to
Gorbachev's ascension to power. And while the Soviet government
was largely successful in the early 1980s in destroying the dissi
dent movement, the dissidents left behind a corpus of writings and
an example of personal heroism that inspired the reformers and
provided them with a measure of guidance when they tried to reform
the Soviet state a few years later. Sakharov, in particular, was impor
tant in transmitting to the reformers the ideas and moral principles
of the dissidents; Iurii Afanas'ev and Galina Starovoitova, who in
1991 served as an advisor to Eltsin, were among those who took
pains to acknowledge their indebtedness to him.48
In spite of this, the circumstances in which the reformers found
themselves were significantly different from those that pertained
to the dissidents. For one thing, the reforms Gorbachev carried
out blurred the sharp distinction between the Soviet regime and
its critics that prevailed in the Brezhnev era. With few exceptions,
the reformers were not persecuted. As a result, a reformer critical
of Gorbachev's policy o? perestro?ka, such as Afanas'ev, had more
in common with reform-minded individuals within the government,
such as Alexander Iakovl'ev, than any dissident ever had with Suslov
262 JAY BERGMAN
or Kosygin. What this meant for the reformers was that they could
analyze the Soviet system, even if they used the emotionally-charged
terminology of totalitarianism, far more dispassionately than the
dissidents could. If nothing else, the possibility of influencing policy
might cause even reformers sharply critical of perestroika to hesitate
before attacking it publicly.
Political considerations aside, there were substantive reasons for
the reformers not to characterize the Soviet Union as totalitarian.
By the time Gorbachev initiated perestroika, the Soviet system was
considerably weaker than it had been in the Brezhnev era, so much
so that one could legitimately question whether the Soviet Union
under Gorbachev was totalitarian at all. If the reformers were to
determine that it was, the criticism that would follow could conceiv
ably impair their overall credibility, a possibility that the dissidents,
in using the term a decade earlier, did not have to consider. In addi
tion, the reformers had to decide whether the Soviet Union was
totalitarian just when an entire school of "revisionist" historians and
social scientists in the West were claiming not only that the Soviet
system as a whole was not, and never had been, totalitarian, but
that totalitarianism, as a generic concept and category, had little or
no empirical validity.49 In other words, if the reformers determined
that the Soviet Union was totalitarian, then unlike the dissidents,
they would not find much support for their conclusion in Western
scholarship.50
Nevertheless, the vast majority of the reformers unequivocally
called the Soviet Union under Stalin totalitarian, and only a slightly
smaller percentage also applied the term to the Soviet system under
Stalin's successors. The fact that even Ligachev and Arbatov, figures
within Gorbachev's entourage not considered especially sympathetic
to perestroika, acknowledged that the Soviet system was totalitarian
may have emboldened reformers who were evaluating the term
to draw the identical conclusion.51 Writing in 1988 in Sovetskaia
kul'tura, N. A. Popov described totalitarianism as an extreme "stati
zation" of social life, and claimed it existed in the Soviet Union into
the Gorbachev era; writing at about the same time in Voprosy istorii,
Afanas'ev essentially reiterated Popov's conclusions.52 Also in 1988
the Declaration of the Democratic Union included the assertion that
inasmuch as the Soviet leadership retained its monopoly of political
power, the Soviet Union was still totalitarian.53 One year later,
Nikolai Travkin, the leader of the Democratic Platform and a success
ful candidate for election to the Congress of People's Deputies, stated
unambiguously that the system he and his colleagues were intent on
dismantling was a totalitarian one; in that same year, the program
of the civic organization ROSS Y condemned as "naive" the opinion
that the Communist Party was the enemy of totalitarianism.54 Writing
in the late 1980s, Alexander Iakovl'ev commented that the degener
ation of ideology typical of totalitarianism was evident in the Soviet
Union not only in Stalin's time but in the 1960s and 1970s as well.55
And in 1989 Tengiz Gudava went so far as to argue that while total
itarianism, as a societal phenomenon, was not a problem, govern
ments - as opposed to societies - could legitimately be considered
totalitarian, and that for all the reforms Gorbachev enacted, the Soviet
Union was still a totalitarian state because political power remained
in the hands of a single party professing a monolithic ideology.56
When these same individuals who called the Soviet Union total
itarian tried to explain the origins of totalitarianism, this consensus
of opinion broke down. Just as in the case of the dissidents, but
with somewhat greater analytical exactitude, the reformers offered
a variety of answers. Some traced the roots of totalitarianism to
Utopian, and especially socialist, ideologies. Viktor Kurgin, who was
active in both the Democratic Union and Memorial, said he consid
ered Leninism "the ideological foundation" of totalitarianism.57 K.
S. Gadizhev, in Voprosy filosofii, emphasized the role of "utopian
political philosophy" in causing regimes that were totalitarian to
seek "the moral reformation of man"; convinced that their motives
were pure, these regimes had no qualms about mobilizing entire
bureaucracies to achieve this objective.58 And A. L. Aliushin traced
the intellectual origins of totalitarianism to Rousseau, from whom
(he said) Marx and other socialists derived the notion of radically
transforming society in accordance with a preconceived notion of
human perfectibility.59
Another interpretation popular among the reformers was that
Soviet totalitarianism was a logical culmination of Russian culture
and history, its emergence and eventual ascendancy in Russia a
reflection of certain deficiencies in the Russian national character.
L. A. Sedov, for example, claimed to discern in the Russian people a
264 JAY BERGMAN
constellation of personality traits - a veneration of force, an extreme

sensitivity to criticism, an inability to empathize, a tendency to
conform, and an unwillingness to confront adversity - that he said
made them especially susceptible to totalitarianism; so pervasive
were these traits in the Russian people that Russian rulers in earlier
times - Ivan IV and Peter the Great were the examples he offered -
could rule with a degree of authority that made the actual power they
exercised comparable to that of totalitarian dictators of the twentieth
century, who had the advantage of having far more advanced tech
nology at their disposal.60
Yet another interpretation the reformers favored was that totali
tarianism was the result of industrialization proceeding too rapidly.
According to this view, Russia, as well as other countries in Europe
such as Germany and Italy, experienced a transition from "tradi
tional" to "industrial" forms of social organization that by virtue of
being unusually rapid and uneven, made the people in these coun
tries demand that the state ameliorate the effects of this transition
by restoring order and predictability to their lives.61 In countries
where the state was able to do this, all too often the result was
totalitarianism. In contrast to England, where the Industrial Revolu
tion proceeded slowly and organically, giving people time to adjust to
the changes it produced, in Central and Eastern Europe these changes
were so abrupt as to be both psychologically traumatic and intellec
tually inexplicable. This in turn created a craving for "totality" that
only the state could provide. And because industrialization occurred
in Russia when the Orthodox Church was a spent force spiritually
and intellectually, this need for "totality" was filled in Russia not by
religion but by socialist, and especially Bolshevik, ideology.62
But the reformers of the Gorbachev era were more concerned with
redefining totalitarianism than with ascertaining its origins. Unlike
the dissidents, whose claim that the Soviet Union was totalitarian was
always, at the very least, a plausible one, the reformers who followed
them had to reconcile their assertion that the Soviet Union was still
totalitarian with the fact that the reforms the Soviet government was
then initiating suggested very strongly it was not. Indeed, the very
fact that persons in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s could call
the Soviet Union totalitarian, and do so openly and without fear of
persecution, seemed only further proof that the Soviet Union was no
longer totalitarian.
The reformers resolved this dilemma by construing totalitarianism
to mean the aspiration to total power, rather than the actual exercise
of total power. No regime, not even Stalin's, ever achieved total
power. But regimes that exercised less than total power could still be
fairly described as totalitarian, and the power they exercised varied
greatly depending on the particular circumstances. This is essentially
what N. V. Zagladin claimed in an article in Kentavr, published
shortly after the Soviet Union's collapse. In the article, Zagladin
acknowledged that totalitarian regimes were never entirely static,
that changes occurred, and that these regimes, notwithstanding their
enormous power, were incapable of eliminating completely "a spirit
of freedom" in the people they ruled. But by gaining some popular
support, perhaps by increasing the supply of consumer goods, these
regimes could dispense with coercion and terror. The result, although
Zagladin did not actually use the phrase, was a kind of "consensual"
totalitarianism that had the potential to endure for many years.63
Other reformers, such as A. Migranian, came to essentially the
same conclusion Zagladin did by constructing elaborate typolo
gies of totalitarian regimes, carefully distinguishing those they said
were "partially" totalitarian (according to Migranian Nazi Germany
could be placed in this category) from those, such as Stalin's, that
were almost "totally" totalitarian.64 Still others, most notably lu. I.
Igritskii, simply acknowledged that no political system could ever
accumulate or exercise total power, but that totalitarianism, as a
generic category, might still be salvaged if those who used the term
stated clearly that it referred to the aspiration to total power, rather
than the attainment of it. When he expressed this view Igritskii was
still agnostic on whether the Soviet Union after Stalin was total
itarian. But he subsequently came to the conclusion that it was:
totalitarianism, to exist, need not entail the application of terror,
and thus the Soviet Union was totalitarian under Khrushchev and
Brezhnev as well as under Stalin.65
What distinguished totalitarian regimes from others, the reformers
insisted, was not the amount of power they accumulated. Rather,
these regimes were unique in instilling in those they ruled a certain
"consciousness," a way of thinking about the external world that for
266 JAY BERGMAN
totalitarian regimes was both an end in itself and a necessary prere

quisite to whatever projects of social engineering they happened
to contemplate; for totalitarian regimes that were intent merely on
perpetuating themselves, creating a particular "mindset" among the
population was no less essential. According to L. Gozman and
A. Etkind, who collaborated on an article on totalitarianism, the
consciousness totalitarian dictators sought to instill was one in which
everything was viewed monocausally. This, they said, was why total
itarian regimes tended to glorify "the simple man": because such an
individual was unable to comprehend the world around him in all its
variety and complexity, he would likely accept tutelage and direc
tion from the state, which by asserting always that the problems it
faced were simple ones, could more plausibly claim omniscience
and omnicompetence.66 But not all the reformers agreed with the
notion that totalitarian consciousness entailed primarily the simplifi
cation of reality. For E. V Nadtochii, totalitarian consciousness was
essentially an ethos of collective salvation that denied the validity
of individual experience; and for K. S. Gadizhev, it was nothing
less than a vehicle for creating an entirely new species of human
being, which Gadizhev considered the primary objective of every
totalitarian regime:
The anthropological component of totalitarianism consists of a striving to the total

alteration and transformation of man in accordance with a particular ideological
orientation. The most important of the ideas and mechanisms that are directed
towards the modification of human nature is the rigorous control over man's
consciousness, his thoughts, his reflections, his internal world_The task [of a
totalitarian system] is the complete transformation of man, the construction of a
new type of personality, a kind of homo totalitaricus, with a particular psychic
constitution, a specific mentality, cognitive and behavioral characteristics, and so
on, that is achieved by means of a standardization and unification of the basis of
individuality, its dissolution into the masses, turning all individuals into a kind
of statistical mean, and the sterilization, or in any case the suppression, of the
individual, personal basis of a human being.67
In much the same way, O. Iu. Iartseva claimed that totalitarianism

insinuated itself directly into peoples' consciousness by inculcating
a belief in the miraculous and the supernatural, and a blind faith
in the inherent benevolence and wisdom of the ruler; that many
people in the Soviet Union in the 1980s claimed that everything
Gorbachev did was right was ample evidence totalitarianism and the
obsequiousness it produced had not been eradicated entirely. Indeed,
because totalitarian consciousness destroyed the moral foundations

of a society from within, totalitarianism itself was more like cancer
than the plague, a disease intrinsic to the system rather than one
caused by some toxic agent external to it. In Iartseva's opinion, this
was precisely why totalitarianism was so difficult to eradicate.68
What these ruminations on totalitarian consciousness have in
common is the recognition that the principal victim of totalitari
anism is the individual himself. In a variety of ways, but with the
same objective of forcing the Soviet people to acknowledge the
moral failings of the political system that still oppressed them, the
reformers of the Gorbachev era condemned totalitarianism most of
all for its depredation of the individual personality, for its attempt to
destroy the notion dear to the reformers and, before them, the Soviet
dissidents that every human being has an inherent worth and dignity,
and that the autonomy and freedom he is entitled to are inviolable.
It was hardly an accident that the reformers described how totalitar
ianism despoiled the individual by comparing people living under
totalitarianism to "screws" or "cogs" in a machine. This was how
Mikhail Heller, Dmitrii Volkogonov, I. A. Zevelev, S. A. Grigorian,
and A. E. Medunin explained the dehumanization that occurred in
a totalitarian system.69 According to these individuals, totalitari
anism entailed a diminution of autonomy so severe the individual
personality was rendered spiritually and intellectually defenseless.
By treating the individual, in Sergei Kuleshov's words, solely as "an
appendage of the moloch of the state," totalitarian regimes came
closer than any ordinary despotism or tyranny ever did to robbing
people of the very qualities that made them human.70
Indeed, totalitarianism, as the reformers catalogued its evil conse
quences, sought the destruction of the very notion of objective truth,
and with it the possibility of writing history honestly. Among the
most pernicious aspects of Soviet totalitarianism, according to the
founders of the Union established in 1988 to democratize the Soviet
Union further, was the Communist Party's longstanding monopoly
on truth, which contributed to "the spiritual mediocrity and impover
ishment" of the Soviet people.71 According to Gozman and Etkind,
by controlling what people remembered of the past, totalitarian
systems could more easily mold their expectations of the future.
History, then, was something totalitarian regimes were likely to
268 JAY BERGMAN
manipulate, alter, distort, or ignore. But it was not nearly enough

to prevent the recollection and analysis of past events. Totalitarian
regimes were intent on nothing less than obliterating the very distinc
tion between reality and illusion without which rational inquiry and
discourse are nearly impossible. In the article he wrote for Voprosy
filosofii, Gadizhev described how totalitarian systems destroy the
ability of people to think rationally and coherently about the world:
The totalitarian mentality is significant precisely in its utilizing principles and

conclusions based on ideology instead of facts. A logic of the absurd wins out
over a logic based on common sense. A fictive, illusory, artificially constructed
reality takes the place of the reality that actually exists.73
Because the reformers were intent on pursuing Gorbachev's

injunction to "fill in the blank pages" of Soviet history, they were
especially sensitive to the degree to which the effects of totalitari
anism could impede their effort. That the reformers considered this
effort profoundly important is undeniable. In Kuleshov's words,
studying history was not merely a moral and civic imperative; it was
"the fundamental intellectual drama of our time." His statement that
"we cannot be indifferent to the past if we want to live" was one
with which the other reformers of the Gorbachev era wholeheartedly
agreed.74 As they saw it, the struggle to destroy totalitarianism in
the Soviet Union and the struggle to tell the truth about the history
of the Soviet Union were really one and the same. To eliminate
Soviet totalitarianism one had to understand its historical origins and
development, and once this totalitarianism was finally eradicated,
a commitment to recording events honestly and truthfully was the
best protection, and perhaps the only protection, against its return.
Having redefined totalitarianism as a generic label for regimes that
merely aspired to total power, the reformers could claim that, far from
being indestructible, these regimes might eventually decline and
collapse. Some even suggested that this degeneration was inevitable.
Perhaps because they tended, as a result of the Marxist education they
received, to view reality dialectically, it was easy for the reformers to
reach the sanguine conclusion that, for all its pretensions to perma
nence, totalitarianism contained within itself the seeds of its own
destruction. Sedov and A. V Falin, for example, stressed that the
enthusiasm that is required for a totalitarian regime to engage in
vast projects of social engineering inevitably slackens; when this
happens, the regime becomes conservative and stagnant. The bene

ficiaries of the regime, who by this time have formed a nomenklatura
to preserve their privileges and pass them on to their descendants,
have no real interest any more in advancing an ideological agenda,
and they are increasingly oblivious to forces in the society that seek
the regime's destruction. Making their retention of power even more
problematical is the fact that the technology totalitarian regimes
utilize effectively when they are pursuing ideological objectives
works to the advantage of dissidents and other opponents of the
regime once these objectives have been achieved. In the Brezhnev
era, for instance, access to xerox machines was carefully limited lest
the dissidents use them to spread anti-Soviet propaganda.75
It hardly surprised the reformers that by the mid 1980s the Soviet
Union had become, in Kagarlitskii's phrase, a "disintegrating mono
lith," a system in which the elements of a civil society that first
appeared in the 1960s now had the potential to force what was once
a fully totalitarian system to become a genuinely democratic one.76
Although Gozman and Etkind did not share Kagarlitskii's convic
tion that this Soviet democracy, once it emerged, would necessarily
be socialist, they agreed with him that "the totalitarian personality
and its enthusiasm are a thing of the past"; the Soviet Union, they
said, was becoming a semi-totalitarian, or a post-totalitarian, political
system in which the people could pursue private interests without
the regime even attempting to stop them.77 If, as Migranian insisted,
it was too much to hope that the Soviet Union (or any other totali
tarian system) could proceed directly from totalitarianism to democ
racy, there was some evidence to suggest that the Soviet Union was
entering a transitional phase from totalitarianism to authoritarianism,
and that once all vestiges of totalitarianism were eliminated, the
Soviet system would finally become a genuinely democratic one, just
as Spain, Portugal, Greece, Brazil, and Argentina did in the 1970s and
1980s.78 The Declaration of Memorial, issued in December 1989,
stated simply that the Soviet people were "trying to overcome the
effects of decades of a totalitarian regime." However energetically it
might seek to suppress civil and political freedom, the Soviet system,
according to the authors of the Declaration, was also fairly sensitive
to pressures for its own reform and regeneration.79
270 JAY BERGMAN
There was always the danger, of course, that the Soviet Union
could revert to a pure, unadulterated totalitarianism. This was a
possibility that a number of reformers, most notably Kara-Murza
and Dushchenko, worried about, largely because they feared that
perestroika and glasnosf, by reducing the apathy that existed in the
Brezhnev era, could cause people to consider totalitarianism an easy
solution to social problems previously ignored or denied but now the
subject of heated discussion and debate. Should Gorbachev's attempt
at democratizing the Soviet Union fail, the Soviet people might well
blame democracy itself, rather than the policies Gorbachev adopted
to achieve it, and yearn for the emergence of a political messiah
to whom they would willingly relinquish their political sovereignty.
As the reformers saw it, totalitarianism was always a temptation,
a disease of the spirit to which the Soviet people, after less than a
decade of glasnosf', were hardly immune.80
CONCLUSION
Despite their fears, the reformers expected the Soviet Union to

survive, and the process of reform Gorbachev began to continue.
None of them thought the system would collapse in the immediate
future, though undoubtedly some of them were pleased when it
did. In failing to foresee this, the reformers, of course, were hardly
unique, and those in the Soviet Union who did not call the political
system totalitarian were just as surprised by what happened in August
1991 as were those who did. But there is reason to believe that, by
giving credence to the concept of totalitarianism, and by calling the
Soviet Union totalitarian (or post-totalitarian or semi-totalitarian),
the reformers blinded themselves to the possibility that the collapse
of the Soviet Union - as opposed to its continued reform, regression
to a kind of neo-Stalinism, or transformation into a military dictator
ship - was imminent. For all the qualifications the reformers placed
on their conclusion that the Soviet Union was totalitarian - that
totalitarianism referred merely to an aspiration to total power; that
the Soviet Union, while still totalitarian, was entering a transitional
phase from totalitarianism to authoritarianism; that totalitarianism,
like everything else in life, was destined to decay and die - they
persisted in this view to the very moment of the actual collapse,
and one cannot help but conclude that in doing so, they made it
harder for themselves to comprehend just how fragile the Soviet
system had become. If the reformers had spent less time analyzing
the sources of the Soviet Union's strength (which is really what they
were doing when they asked themselves whether the Soviet Union
was totalitarian), and more time exploring its weaknesses (which
their obsession with totalitarianism prevented them from doing),
they might have foreseen the collapse this fragility portended.
But even if the reformers had investigated these weaknesses fully,
as long as they considered concepts such as semi-totalitarianism
and post-totalitarianism helpful in understanding Soviet politics and
history, they ran the risk of minimizing the severity of these weak
nesses. However carefully the reformers tried to apply these con
cepts, their very existence in the reformers' analytical lexicon had
the effect of vitiating the notion that totalitarianism, as a political
phenomenon, was sui generis. What is more, by speculating that the
Soviet system, which they considered totalitarian, could peacefully
transform itself into something less malevolent, the reformers made
it harder for themselves to comprehend what the dissidents seemed
to understand intuitively: that once a regime like the Soviet Union
begins to doubt itself, and to tamper with the ideology it uses to
justify its monopoly of power, it runs the risk of destroying its very
legitimacy and invites the kind of implosion that actually occurred
in 1991.
Paradoxically, the reformers were likely to minimize this possi
bility regardless of whether they called the Soviet Union totalitarian,
semi-totalitarian, or post-totalitarian. Each formulation, in its own
way, excluded what may have been the most likely outcome of
perestroika given that the problems it was meant to solve were so
intractable, namely its abject failure by virtue of the Soviet system
collapsing totally and all at once. Because the reformers, in spec
ulating about possible variants of totalitarianism, used the term
without the analytical rigor its application to Soviet politics and
history clearly required, they were unable to understand this.
There are other reasons why the reformers, and the dissidents
before them, might have been better off avoiding the whole concept
of totalitarianism. By using an abstraction like totalitarianism to
explain what happened in Russia after 1917, the dissidents and the
272 JAY BERGMAN
reformers were more apt to invoke abstract concepts - moderni

zation, rationalism, scientism, and ideological utopianism - in
explaining the emergence of totalitarianism itself. In doing so, how
ever, they trivialized the role of individual choice in the genesis of
historical events generally, and in the Bolshevik Revolution and the
development of Soviet communism in particular - surely something
neither set of critics consciously intended. But regardless of their
intentions, this is what their emphasis on totalitarianism suggested.
By implying that the Bolshevik Revolution was just a prelude to
the totalitarianism that was destined by larger historical forces to
emerge, the dissidents and the reformers effectively precluded any
genuine analysis of how individuals such as Kerenskii, Miliukov,
and Chernov, by their inaction and errors of judgment in the spring
and summer of 1917, helped to facilitate the Bolsheviks' seizure of
power in October. In this way, they reduced the Revolution from
a decisive event in history that was contingent upon the choices of
individuals who might have acted differently to a relatively trivial
episode whose outcome was never in doubt.81
Opponents of the Bolsheviks whose mistakes facilitated the
Bolsheviks' success were not the only ones absolved of responsi
bility for their actions by the dissidents and the reformers describing
the Soviet system as totalitarian. Also absolved as a result of this were
all those who, once the Soviet system was established, did nothing to
resist it. Although the dissidents and the reformers disagreed among
themselves over whether the Soviet people should be criticized for
not resisting more than they did - some dissidents, such as Solzhen
itsyn, were unable to make up their minds on this point - those who
thought that the Soviet people should have offered greater resis
tance, and that greater resistance might have lessened the severity of
repression, made their argument less tenable by calling the Soviet
system totalitarian.82 After all, any political system that exercises
total power cannot, by definition, be resisted. On the question of
resistance, in fact, the dissidents and the reformers wanted to have
it both ways: either the Soviet Union was totalitarian, in which case
resistance was futile, or the Soviet Union was not totalitarian, and
thus resistance was a possible option. But one could not, as some
of them did, call the Soviet Union totalitarian and also bemoan the
absence of resistance to it.
When used to distinguish modern dictatorships from earlier ones,

which to some extent is what the dissidents and the reformers tried to
do, totalitarianism surely obscures just as much as it clarifies. It may
be true that regimes like the Nazi and the Soviet were qualitatively
different from ordinary despotisms and tyrannies of earlier centuries
in accumulating power that, while never total, was sometimes very
nearly so. It may also be true that these regimes were unique in the
central role they assigned to ideology. And it may also be true that
these regimes did more than others to destroy the autonomy and
dignity of the individual. As a result, there may be some utility in
distinguishing them from others taxonomically. But totalitarianism
is probably not the best term to use in doing so because it refers
primarily to the methods these regimes employed to achieve their
goals, and only secondarily to the goals themselves. Totalitarianism
speaks eloquently to the enormous power of dictatorships like
Hitler's and Stalin's, and it speaks equally well to their success
in using this power to mobilize enormous bureaucracies to achieve
ideological objectives. In some formulations, such as Arendt's, it
also captures the cognitive and psychological effects of ideology, be
it Nazi or Stalinist, on the people who are forced to accept it and
internalize it. But totalitarianism says nothing about the specific, pro
grammatic objectives for which these dictatorships were mobilized
- collectivization and industrialization in the case of Stalin, leben
sraum and the Holocaust in the case of Hitler - or about the larger
differences these objectives suggest between Nazi ideology, which
called for the recreation of a primitive society hostile to modernity
and in constant struggle with nature, and Stalinist ideology, which, as
a variant of Marxism, always viewed the communist utopia the New
Soviet Man would inhabit as quintessentially a modern one, marked
by industry, high technology, and a Promethean faith in man's ability
to transform nature.83 One is hard pressed to think of two regimes in
history whose ultimate goals were more dissimilar.
In light of this, one has to wonder why the dissidents and the
reformers persisted in using a term, totalitarianism, that was so ill
suited to the task the two sets of critics had set for themselves of
telling the truth about the Soviet Union as best they could. Several
reasons come to mind. One is that totalitarianism, as a generic con
cept, was attractive precisely because it was so abstract: unlike
274 JAY BERGMAN
the official interpretation of Stalinism, which since Khrushchev's

Secret Speech in 1956 attributed its horrors entirely to Stalin's own
megalomania, one that ascribed it to a broader phenomenon like
totalitarianism seemed to make the Soviet system as a whole a legit
imate subject of analysis. Another is that totalitarianism served as
a convenient antipode to "civil society," which many dissidents and
reformers saw as the organizing principle of the democracy they
hoped the Soviet Union would eventually become. Yet another is
that totalitarianism was a term the reformers, at least, could use to
distinguish their own beliefs and attitudes from others as they partic
ipated actively, if somewhat warily, in the political life of the Soviet
state. The final reason - which seems by far the most compelling one
- is that totalitarianism conjured a reality for the dissidents and the
reformers that in ethical terms was the exact antithesis of everything
these two sets of critics valued most, especially the concept of indi
vidual sovereignty and the belief in the inherent dignity and worth
of the individual. Where the dissidents and the reformers yearned
for a world in which the individual personality was treasured for
its own sake, as an end in itself, totalitarianism created in its place
a world in which the individual was nothing more than a means
to larger political and ideological objectives, his autonomy, dignity,
ingenuity, and creativity either harnassed by the state or destroyed
by it. To claim that totalitarianism was a malady of modern times
that degraded nearly everything it touched was to posit the existence
of a novel and especially egregious form of tyranny whose very lack
of any conceivable justification confirmed the moral virtue of those
who retained the integrity and the independence to condemn it; for
the dissidents and the reformers alike, describing the Soviet Union
as totalitarian was a way of affirming their most cherished convic
tions and conferring upon themselves a moral legitimacy that justi
fied the personal sacrifices their struggle against the Soviet system
often required. If, by calling the Soviet Union totalitarian, the dis
sidents and the reformers revealed more about themselves and their
own values than they did about the Soviet Union, one can at least
acknowledge that what they did made perfect psychological sense.
NOTES
1 Among the opponents of Mussolini who called his regime totalitarian were the
Italian Socialist, Filippo Turati, and Giovanni Amendola, a leader of the demo
cratic and secular opposition who, for criticizing Mussolini, was beaten to death
by a fascist mob. Abbott Gleason: Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold
War, New York, 1995, pp. 14-16.
2 Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, 1958; Carl J.
Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski: Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy,
Cambridge, MA, 1956.
3 Carl J. Friedrich: The Nature of Totalitarianism', C. J. Friedrich, ed.: Totalitar
ianism, New York, 1964, pp. 47-60; Zbigniew K. Brzezinski: Permanent Purge:
Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge, MA, 1956, pp. 12-48.
4 Hannah Arendt: Totalitarianism [Volume III of The Origins of Totalitarianism],
New York, 1968, especially pp. 166-177.
5 Orwell, to be sure, never intended Oceania, the society he depicted in 1984,
as a fictional equivalent of the Soviet Union or of any other existing society. He
also indicates quite clearly in the novel that the power of Big Brother, the ruler of
Oceania, far exceeds Hitler's and Stalin's. But many readers of the book believed it
to replicate the salient features of Soviet totalitarianism. Orwell may have contrib
uted to this misunderstanding both by calling the Soviet Union totalitarian in
several articles he wrote in the 1940s, and by fashioning characters in the book,
such as Emmanuel Goldstein, after actual figures in Soviet history (in Goldstein's
case, Leon Trotskii). See, for example, George Orwell: 'Literature and Totalitar
ianism', The Listener (June 19, 1941), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus,
eds.: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume
II, New York, 1968, pp. 134-137; and George Orwell: 'James Burnham and the
Managerial Revolution', Tribune (May 1946), reprinted in ibid., IV, pp. 160-184.
6 Walter Laqueur: The Dream that Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union, New
York, 1994, p. 91.
7 Ibid.', Alan Bullock: Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, New York, 1993, pp. 634
635.
8 BoVshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia [Large Soviet Encyclopedia], Moscow, 1977,
p. 124.
9 Rudolf Gil'ferding: 'Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm ili totalitarnoe gosudarstven
noye khoziaistvo?' [ 'State Capitalism or a Totalitarian Statist Economy?' ], Sotsial
isticheskii vestnik [Socialist Courier], 8, 460 (April 25, 1940), pp. 118-120; A.
Rossi [Angelo Tasca]: 'Fashistskaia Italiia i Sovetskii Soiuz' ['Fascist Italy and
the Soviet Union'], ibid., 6, 458 (March 24, 1940), pp. 69-71.
10 For example, F. Dan: 'Puti vozrozhdeniia' ['Paths to Revival'], ibid., 14-15,
371 (August 14, 1936), pp. 5-11.
11 Ironically, although Trotskii's strictures on totalitarianism might suggest he
was more optimistic about the Soviet Union in 1939 than he had been in 1936,
the full texts of the two works indicate the opposite. Evidently, in 1936 the fact
(according to Trotskii) that the Soviet Union was totalitarian did not preclude
its eventual overthrow by the proletariat (which he predicted), while the mere
possibility in 1939 that the regime might degenerate into totalitarianism caused
Trotskii to conceive of circumstances in which he would have to acknowledge
that socialism as a political program had failed. Leon Trotsky: The Revolution
276 JAY BERGMAN
Betrayed, New York, 1972, p. 279; L. Trotsky: 'The USSR in War", reprinted in
Leon Trotsky: In Defense of Marxism, New York, 1973, pp. 5, 9.
12 ?^j?. 'Detente, Disarmament, and Soviet Democratization', Political Diary, 60
(September 1969), reprinted in Stephen F. Cohen, ed.: An End to Silence: Uncen
sored Opinion in the Soviet Union, New York, 1982, p. 329. Medvedev, of course,
believed the Soviet Union could reform itself. And in order to exonerate Lenin
of responsibility for Stalin's crimes, he ascribed them to peculiarities in Russia's
historical development and to pathological aspects of Stalin's personality. On the
rare occasions when Medvedev called the Soviet Union totalitarian, he limited its
applicability to the Stalin era, and seemed to use the term mostly for rhetorical
effect. Roy Medvedev: 'What Awaits Us in the Future?' (May 1974), reprinted
in Michael Meerson-Aksenov and Boris Shragin, eds.: The Political, Social, and
Religious Thought of Russian 'Samizdat' - An Anthology, Belmont, MA, 1977,
p. 82.
13 One dissident, Alexander Podrabinek, was arrested in Moscow in 1978 and
formally accused of having slandered the Soviet Union by calling it totalitarian.
'Obvinitel'noe zakliuchenie po ugolovnomu delu No. 42429 po obvineniiu Podra
bineka Aleksandra Pinkhosovicha po st. 190-1 UK RSFSR' ['An Accusation of
Guilt in the Criminal Matter No. 42429 Concerning the Indictment of Alexander
Pinkhovsovich Podrabinek on the Basis of Article 190-1 of the Criminal Code
of the RSFSR'] (June 30, 1978), reprinted in Materialy samizdat [Samizdat
Materials], 12/79 (April 23, 1979), AC No. 3534, p. 13. The authorities may
also have reacted harshly because Podrabinek had used a term Western anticom
munists often used as well.
14 N. Pechal'nik: 'Razmyshleniia o nashikh zhertvakh i dostizheniiakh' ['Reflec
tions on our Sacrifices and Achievements'], Luch svobody [Ray of Freedom],
5 (1972), reprinted in Sobranie dokumentov samizdata [Collection of Samizdat
Documents], Volume 23 (Munich, 1977), AC No. 1175-d, p. 24; V Skorbiashchii:
'Mif o novom 'sovetskom' cheloveke' [The Myth about the New 'Soviet' Man'],
Demokrat [Democrat], 3 (1971), reprinted in ibid., AC No. 1152-v, p. 6.
15 Peter Grigorenko: 'To the Participants of the Budapest Conference', (February
13, 1968), reprinted in Meerson-Aksenov and Shragin, p. 56; Petr Grigorenko:
'Speech at Kosterin's Funeral', reprinted in The Grigorenko Papers, Boulder, CO,
1976, pp. 65-66.
16 Andrei D. Sakharov: 'Afterward', (May 11, 1978), reprinted in Andrei D.
Sakharov: Alarm and Hope, New York, 1978, p. 169; Andrei Sakharov: 'The
Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe - Aims, Signifi
cance, Difficulties' (November 8, 1978), Chronicle of Current Events, 51 (1979),
reprinted in P. Reddaway, ed.: UncensoredRussia, New York, 1972, p. 209; Andrei
Sakharov: 'A Letter from Exile' (May 4,1980), reprinted in ibid., p. 224. Sakharov
traced the roots of Soviet totalitarianism to Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution.
See his 'Revoliutsionnyi totalitarizm v nashe istorii' ['Revolutionary Totalitari
anism in our History'], published posthumously in Kommunist [Communist], 5
(March 1991), pp. 60-71.
17 Valentin Turchin: The Inertia of Fear and the Scientific Worldview, New York,
1981, p. 5.
18 Vladimir Bukovsky: 'Totalitarianism in Crisis: Is There a Smooth Transition
to Democracy?' Ellen Frankel Paul, ed.: Totalitarianism at the Crossroads, New
Brunswick, NJ, 1990, p. 10.
19 K. Vol'nyi: 'Bor'ba za svobodu - dolg narodov rossii' ['The Struggle for

Freedom is the Duty of the Peoples of Russia'], Luch svobody, 1 (1973), reprinted
in Sobranie, 23, AC No. 1175-zh, p. 46.
20 Dissidents in Eastern Europe used the term as well. See, for example, Vaclav
Havel: 'The Power of the Powerless' (1979), reprinted in Vaclav Havel et al.:
The Power of the Powerless, Armonk, NY, 1985, p. 27; and Mihajlo Mihajlov:
Underground Notes, London, 1977, p. 17. Eastern European and Soviet dissidents
were occasionally in contact, and may have exchanged ideas about totalitarianism
as a result.
21 Mikhail Kukobaka: 'Zashchita prav cheloveka i razriadka - nedelimy' ['The
Defense of the Rights of Man and D?tente are Indivisible'], reprinted in Materialy
samizdata, 21111 (October 17, 1977), AC No. 3033, p. 10.
22 Bukovsky,p. 10.
23 Anatoly P. Fedoseyev: 'The Passage to New Russia and Some Thoughts on its
Alternative Constitutional Order', Alexander Shtromas and Morton A. Kaplan:
The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future, New York, 1988, p. 406.
24 Bukovsky, pp. 16?17; Alexander Shtromas: 'On Totalitarianism and the
Prospects for Institutionalized Revolution in the USSR and China', Shtromas
and Kaplan, pp. 51, 66; E. Petrov and la. Gurevich: 'Chem zhit'?' ['Instead of
Living?'], Mikhail Agurskii, ed.: Chto zhdet Sovetskii Soiuz? Sbornik statei po
povodu 'Pis'ma vozhdiam' A. Solzhenitsyna [What Awaits the Soviet Union? A
Collection of Essays on 'The Letter to the Soviet Leaders' of A. Solzhenitsyn],
Moscow 1974, reprinted in Materialy samizdata, 43/82 (December 31,1982), AC
No. 2450, p. 32.
25 Vasilii Barats: 'Ot sostavitelia' ['From the Compiler'], Listy informatsii [Infor
mation Sheets], 1 (1980), reprinted in Materialy samizdata, 15/81 (April 13,1981),
AC No. 4274, p. 3; Ivan Ruslanov: 'Molodezh' v russkoi istorii, chast' IF ['Young
People in Russian History, Part IF] (March 1969), reprinted in Sobranie, 9 (1972),
AC No. 678, p. 23.
26 Iurii Orlov: 'Vozmozhen li sotsializm ne totalitarnogo tipa?' [Ts a Non
Totalitarian Socialism Possible?'], (December 15, 1975), reprinted in Materialy
samizdata, 11/76 (April 9, 1976), AC No. 2425, pp. 1-25.
27 See, for example, Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn: Letter to the Soviet Leaders, New
York, 1974, pp. 19-26; and A World Split Apart, New York, 1978, pp. 23-29,
47-61.
28 Vadim Borisov: 'Personality and National Awareness', Alexander Solzhenitsyn
et al.: From Under the Rubble, Boston, 1975, pp. 197-200.
29 Lev Timofeev: Poslednaia nadezhda vyzhit' [Last Hope for Survival], Tenafly,
NJ, 1985, pp. 149.
30 Vadim Belotserkovskii: 'Beseda s Leonidom Pliushchom' ['A Conversation
with Leonid Pliushch'], Vadim Belotserkovskii, ed.: Demokraticheskie aVterna
tivy [Democratic Alternatives], Fraiburg, 1976, p. 23.
31 Vol'nyi, p. 9.
32 Pranas Vitenas [pseud.]: 'Pochemu sovetskii chelovek bespraven?' ['Why is
Soviet Man without Rights?'], reprinted in Materialy samizdata, 22/86 (July 14,
1986), AC No. 5714, pp. 4-5.
33 Turchin, pp. 108-109,132.
34 Vasily Grossman: Life and Fate, New York, 1985, pp. 214-215.
35 Dmitrii Nelidov [pseud.]: Tdeokraticheskoe soznanie i lichnost?' [Tdeocratic
278 JAY BERGMAN
Consciousness and Personality'] (September 1973), reprinted in Sobranie, 29

(1978), AC No. 1642, p. 273.
36 Turchin, pp. 4, 73.
37 M. Prishelets: 'Sozdanie demokraticheskoi partii - blizhaishaia istoricheskaia
zadacha' ['The Creation of a Democratic Party is the Most Pressing Historical
Task'], Luch svobody, 6 (1973), reprinted in Sobranie, 23, AC No. 1175-e, pp. 2
3.
38 'Nravstvennoe sostoianie naroda' [The Moral Condition of the People'],
Demokrat, 3 (1971), reprinted in ibid., AC No. 1152-v, p. 21.
39 Vol'nyi, p. 15.
40 Evgenii Barabanov: The Moral Prerequisite of Christian Unity', reprinted in
Meerson-Aksenov and Shragin, p. 560.
41 A. Sakharov: The Human Rights Movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe',
p. 209.
42 Alexander Solzhenitsyn: 'How Communism Cripples Nations', Samizdat
Bulletin, 120 (April 1983), n. p.
43 'O russko-kitaiskikh otnosheniiakh' ['On Russian-Chinese Relationships'],
Demokrat, 5 (1971), reprinted in Sobranie, 23, AC No. 1152-d, p. 28; Orlov,
p. 14.
44 V Severnyi: 'Zapadnye strany i bol'shevizm' ['Western Countries and Bolshe
vism'], Luch svobody, 6 (1973), reprinted in Sobranie, 23, AC No. 1175-e, p. 29.
45 A. Sakharov: 'Interview with L'Express (January 27, 1979)', Chronicle of
Current Events, 52 (1980), reprinted in Reddaway, p. 134.
46 Fedor Zniakov: 'Pamiatnaia zapiska' ['A Memorable Note'] (May 1966),
reprinted in Sobranie, 5 (1972), AC No. 374, p. 22.
47 Vol'nyi, p. 51.
48 John Dunlap: The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, Princeton,
1993, pp. 112-113; Galina Starovoitova: Ta uzhe obespechila sebia memuarami'
[T Already Provided Myself with Memoirs'], Nezavisimaia gazeta [Indepen
dent Newspaper], 89 (July 30, 1991), p. 5; Natal'ia Kraminova: 'Chasy Galiny
Starovoitovoi' ['Galina Starovoitova's Watch'], Moskovskie novosti [Moscow
News], 27 (July 8, 1990), p. 16.
49 See, for example, Stephen F. Cohen: Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics
and History Since 1917, New York, 1985, pp. 3-37; J. Arch Getty: Origins of
the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938, New
York, 1985; and Jerry Hough, Russia and the West: Gorbachev and the Politics of
Reform, New York, 1988.
50 These reformers were aware of this, and some of them harshly criticized the
revisionists, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. See, for example, S.
V Kuleshov: 'Posleslovie' ['Epilogue'], Zvezda i svastika: Bol'shevizm i russkii
fashizm [Star and Swastika: Bolshevism and Russian Fascism], Moscow, 1994,
p. 293.
51 G. Arbatov and E. Batalov: 'Politicheskaia reforma i evoliutsiia sovetskogo
gosudarstva' ['Political Reform and the Evolution of the Soviet State'], Kommu
nist [Communist], 4 (March 1989), pp. 35-46; lu. I. Igritskii: 'Snova o totalita
rizme' ['Again on Totalitarianism'], Otechestvennaia istoriia [Patriotic History],
1 (1993), p. 17. On occasion Gorbachev called the regime he headed totalitarian.
Martin Malia: 'Why Amalrik Was Right', Times Literary Supplement, 4675
(November 6, 1992), p. 9.
52 R. W. Davies: Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, Bloomington, 1989,

p. 93; lu. Afanas'ev: Tzbavit' istoricheskuiu nauku ot mertviashchikh put stalin
shchiny' ['Delivering Historical Science from the Deadening Road of the Stalin
Phenomenon'], Voprosy istorii [Questions of History], 6 (1988), p. 73.
53 Deklaratsiia Demokraticheskogo Soiuza [Declaration of the Democratic
Union], reprinted in Materialy samizdata, 24/88 (June 6, 1988), AC No. 6217,
p. 5.
54 Michael McFaul and Sergei Markov: The Troubled Birth of Russian Democ
racy: Parties, Personalities and Programs, Stanford, 1993, p. 71; Programma
i vstav grazhdanskogo ob 'edineniia 'ROSSY' [The Program and Charter of the
Civic Association 'ROSSY'] (January 1989), reprinted in Materialy samizdata,
28/89 (June 28, 1989), AC No. 6397, p. 11.
55 Alexander Yakovlev: The Fate of Marxism in Russia, New Haven, 1993,
pp. 10-14.
56 Tengiz Gudava: 'Some Thoughts on the Subject of 'Perestroika' ', Samizdat
Bulletin, 181 (Spring 1989), n. p.
57 McFaul and Markov, p. 31.
58 K. S. Gadizhev: Totalitarizm kak fenomen XX veka' [Totalitarianism
as a Phenomenon of the Twentieth Century'], Voprosy filosofii [Questions of
Philosophy],! (1992), p. 16.
59 A. L. Aliushin: Totalitarnoe gosudarstvo v modeli i real'nosti: ot Russo k
stalinizmu' [The Totalitarian State in the Abstract and in Reality: From Rousseau
to Stalinism'], A. A. Kara-Murza and A. K. Voskresenskii, eds.: Totalitarizm kak
istoricheskii fenomen [Totalitarianism as a Historical Phenomenon], Moscow,
1989, pp. 162-172. The volume is a transcript of a conference on totalitarianism
organized by the Institute of Philosophy and held in Moscow in 1989.
60 L. A. Sedov: 'K istokam avtoritarnogo soznaniia (istoriko-kul'turologicheskii
etiud)' [To the Sources of Authoritarian Consciousness (A Historical-Culturo
logical Study)'], ibid., pp. 173-202. Sedov characterized these traits as 'juvenile.'
61 V P. Perevalov: Totalitarizm v lichine lichnosti' [Totalitarianism in the Guise
of Personality'], ibid., pp. 145-146
62 See, for example, L. B. Volkov: ' 'Diktaturarazvitiia' ili 'kvazimodernizatsiia' '
[' 'Dictatorship of Development' or 'Quasi-Modernization' '], ibid., pp. 87-88; B.
S. Orlov: 'Germaniia i SSSR v 30-e gody: skhodstvo i razlichiia' ['Germany and
the USSR in the Thirties: Similarity and Differences'], ibid., pp. 98-99; and the
comments of I. A. Isaev in ibid., pp. 21-26.
63 N. V Zagladin; Totalitarizm i Demokratiia: konflikt veka' [Totalitarianism
and Democracy: The Conflict of the Century'], Kentavr [Centaur] (May-June
1992), pp. 3-18.
64 A. Migranian: 'Dolgii put' k evropeiskomu domu: v labirinte' [The Long
Road to a European Home: In the Labyrinth'], Novyi mir [New World], 1 (1989),
pp. 166-184.
65 lu. I. Igritskii: 'Kontseptsiia totalitarizma: uroki mnogoletnikh diskussii na
zapade' [The Concept of Totalitarianism: The Lessons of Many Years of Discus
sion in the West'], Istoriia SSSR [History of the USSR], 6 (1990), pp. 185-187;
Igritskii: 'Snovao totalitarizme,' pp. 13-14.
66 L. Gozman and A. Etkind: 'Kul't vlasti: struktura totalitarnogo soznaniia'
[The Cult of Power: The Structure of Totalitarian Consciousness'], Osmyslif
kul't Stalina [Comprehending the Cult of Stalin], Moscow, 1989, pp. 344-346.
280 JAY BERGMAN
67 E. V Nadtochii: 'O vlasti ischisleniia nad zhizn'iu i nad smert'iu' ['On the
Power of Calculation over Life and Death'], ibid., p. 337; Gadizhev, p. 13.
68 O. Iu. Iartseva: 'V poiskakh uteriannogo razuma' ['Looking for Lost Reason'],
Kara-Murza and Voskresenskii, pp. 60-70.
69 Mikhail Heller: Cogs in the Wheel, New York, 1988; Triumf tirana, tragediia
naroda: beseda s D. A. Volkogonovym i R. A. Medvedevym' [The Triumph of a
Tyrant, the Tragedy of a People: A Conversation with D. A. Volkogonov and R. A.
Medvedev'], Surovaia drama naroda: uchenye i publitsisty o prirode stalinizma
[A Harsh Drama of a People: Scholars and Publicists on the Nature of Stalinism],
Moscow, 1989, p. 288; I. A. Zevelev: 'Magistrali i tupiki industrial'noi epoki'
['Highways and Dead Ends of the Industrial Epoch'], Kara-Murza and Voskre
senskii, p. 121; S. A. Grigorian: 'Sotsiologiia totalitarnosti: vzgliad iznutri' [The
Sociology of Totality: The View from Within'], ibid., p. 94; A. E. Medunin: 'Byl
li kul't lichnosti Stalina povsemestnym?' ['Was Stalin's Cult of Personality a
General One?'] ibid., p. 302.
70 Kuleshov, p. 292.
71 Deklaratsiia Demokraticheskogo Soiuza, p. 5.
72 Gozman and Etkind, p. 48.
73 Gadizhev, p. 18.
74 Sergei Kuleshov: Nashe otechestvo [Our Fatherland], Moscow, 1991, pp. 5,
616.
75 Comments of Sedov in Kara-Murza and Voskresenskii, pp. 31-32; A. V Falin:
'Puti iz bezdny (o nekotorykh mekhanizmakh evoliutsii totalitarnykh rezhimov)'
[The Way Out of the Abyss (On Certain Mechanisms of the Evolution of Totali
tarian Regimes'], ibid., pp. 151-153.
76 Boris Kagarlitsky: The Disintegration of the Monolith, New York, 1992.
77 L. la. Gozman and A. M. Etkind: 'Liudi i vlast' ot totalitarizma k demokratii'
['People and Power from Totalitarianism to Democracy'], V chelovecheskom
izmerenii [In the Human Dimension], Moscow, 1989, pp. 381, 382.
78 Migranian, pp. 169-171.
79 Rossiia pered vyborom [Russia Faces a Choice], reprinted in Materialy samiz
data, 10/90 (March 5, 1990), AC No. 6448, p. 1.
80 Comments of K. Dushchenko in Kara-Murza and Voskresenskii, p. 62;
comments of A. A. Kara-Murza in ibid., pp. 37-38. In 1993 Kara-Murza, while
not exactly expressing regret over the collapse of the Soviet Union two years
earlier, said he considered it an impediment to future reform and democratization.
The reason for this, he maintained, was that before it collapsed, the Soviet Union
was still totalitarian in a number of ways. As a result, the collapse of the Soviet
Union was a total collapse, in which no institutions or political traditions that
could serve as the foundation for a stable and humane social order survived. A. A.
Kara-Murza: 'Chto takoe rossiiskoe zapadnichestvo?' ['What is the Matter with
Russian Westernization?'], Polis [Polis], 2 (1993), p. 91. Kara-Murza's argument
is similar to Martin Malia's in The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in
Russia, 1917-1991, New York, 1994, a lengthy treatise on why the Soviet Union
collapsed.
81 The same applies to the question of responsibility for Nazism in Germany.
Calling Nazi Germany totalitarian, or attributing the Nazis' success in gaining
power to peculiarities in Germany history and national character, seems to lessen
the Nazis' own responsibility for the regime they created, and that of Schleicher,
Hindenburg, and Papen for facilitating their rise to power. See, in this respect,
Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.: Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933, Reading,
MA, 1996.
82 Solzhenitsyn's ambivalence is evident is statements he makes on the subject
in The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, New York,
1974-1978, especially Volumes 1-2, and in 'Repentance and Self-Limitation in
the Life of Nations', an essay he contributed to Iz-pod glyb.
83 For an analysis of what the Nazis intended, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.:
'Fascism and Modernization', World Politics, 24, 4 (1972), pp. 547-564.
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Was the Soviet Union Totalitarian?

The View of Soviet Dissidents and the Reformers of

WAS THE SOVIET UNION TOTALITARIAN?

KEY WORDS: Gorbachev-era reformers, Perestroika, Soviet dissidents, Soviet

In their efforts to explain the political system in the Soviet Union

Studies in East European Thought 50: 247-281,1998.

useless in explaining the actual phenomena to which it was applied,

in human suffering, she believed, was enormous. As a result of

and that the concept of totalitarianism was worth preserving. To the

he revealed when he tried to explain Stalin and Stalinism by using

Still, there were compelling reasons for the dissidents to embrace

THE SOVIET DISSIDENTS

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Soviet dissidents openly called

mourners who had assembled at the funeral to wage "an uncompro

In a lengthy article he wrote in 1973, K. Vol'nyi not only termed

While acknowledging that certain scientific and pseudo-scientific

succeeded in reducing the Soviet people to "the level of kinder

According to the dissidents, this destruction of individualism and

of society, the centrality of ideology, the control of information and

point repeatedly, "the most insidious and difficult-to-avert danger

In a similar vein, the author of an article in Demokrat who chose not

struggle was based. And by universalizing the values and principles

would be instrumental in their effort to destroy the very regime the

THE REFORMERS OF THE GORBACHEV ERA

The reformers of the Gorbachev era - by whom are meant those

constellation of personality traits - a veneration of force, an extreme

totalitarian regimes was both an end in itself and a necessary prere

The anthropological component of totalitarianism consists of a striving to the total

In much the same way, O. Iu. Iartseva claimed that totalitarianism

because totalitarian consciousness destroyed the moral foundations

manipulate, alter, distort, or ignore. But it was not nearly enough

The totalitarian mentality is significant precisely in its utilizing principles and

Because the reformers were intent on pursuing Gorbachev's

happens, the regime becomes conservative and stagnant. The bene

Despite their fears, the reformers expected the Soviet Union to

reformers were more apt to invoke abstract concepts - moderni

When used to distinguish modern dictatorships from earlier ones,

the official interpretation of Stalinism, which since Khrushchev's

19 K. Vol'nyi: 'Bor'ba za svobodu - dolg narodov rossii' ['The Struggle for

Consciousness and Personality'] (September 1973), reprinted in Sobranie, 29

52 R. W. Davies: Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution, Bloomington, 1989,

Central Connecticut State University

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