I don't think it's much of a question of whether Stalin's regime was totalitarian. Rather, I think the dispute that has arisen is not over whether it was totalitarian but rather over how well and accurately the term had been defined before the advent of revisionism. This is a question to which I've dedicated quite a bit of thought over the years, but I hope to make my point here without being too verbose. I think there are essentially two points that should be made in justifying Stalin's archetypal status as a totalitarian dictator: the extent to which totalitarianism can be defined abstractly; and the extent to which it can be distinguished from garden-variety authoritarianism.
On the first point, as I mentioned in class on Thursday, Jan Gross (in Revolution From Abroad) offers an interesting definition of totalitarianism, using Stalin's regime as a test case. If we consider totalitarianism from the standpoint of the tendency of totalitarian governments to eliminate public, collective forms of action unless it sponsors those forms itself, then, as Gross writes, "it thus appears that the totalitarian state confiscates the private realm."[1] However, he continues, this is untrue; it is in fact the opposite "because of the privatization of the public realm."[2] What Gross means is that the Soviets established totalitarian control – at least in its occupation of the Kresy from September 1939 to June 1941, was to make people feel as if participation in public forms of collection action was a way to express private desires, whether it was personal empowerment or settling scores with one's enemies. Clearly Stalin's methods in evoking denunciations, e.g., falls under this definition.
On the second point, since it's unlikely that one would define Stalin as anyone but one or the other (authoritarian or totalitarian), I found an article by Paul C. Sondrol particularly helpful in distinguishing the two terms.[3] Comparison Fidel Castro (totalitarian) to Alfredo Stroessner (the Paraguayan authoritarian dictators), Sondrol suggests seven criteria by which to judge an historical situation: Stalin meets six of these seven (role conception as a function, public ends of power, minimal corruption, official ideology, lack of pluralism, and high legitimacy). Where Stalin seems to have fallen short of one of Sondrol's criteria is in lacking personal charisma, although as noted by Philip Boobbyer remarks, among others, Stalin is able to form a personality cult by advancing one for Lenin and connecting himself as the nature evolution in the Soviet leadership.[4]
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[1] Jan T. Gross, Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1988), 117, italics in original.
[2] Ibid, italics in original.
[3] Paul C. Sondrol, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfred Stroessner," Journal of Latin American Studies, 23, no. 3 (1991): 599-620.
[4] Philip Boobyer, The Stalin Era (London: Routledge, 2000), 15-16.
On the first point, as I mentioned in class on Thursday, Jan Gross (in Revolution From Abroad) offers an interesting definition of totalitarianism, using Stalin's regime as a test case. If we consider totalitarianism from the standpoint of the tendency of totalitarian governments to eliminate public, collective forms of action unless it sponsors those forms itself, then, as Gross writes, "it thus appears that the totalitarian state confiscates the private realm."[1] However, he continues, this is untrue; it is in fact the opposite "because of the privatization of the public realm."[2] What Gross means is that the Soviets established totalitarian control – at least in its occupation of the Kresy from September 1939 to June 1941, was to make people feel as if participation in public forms of collection action was a way to express private desires, whether it was personal empowerment or settling scores with one's enemies. Clearly Stalin's methods in evoking denunciations, e.g., falls under this definition.
On the second point, since it's unlikely that one would define Stalin as anyone but one or the other (authoritarian or totalitarian), I found an article by Paul C. Sondrol particularly helpful in distinguishing the two terms.[3] Comparison Fidel Castro (totalitarian) to Alfredo Stroessner (the Paraguayan authoritarian dictators), Sondrol suggests seven criteria by which to judge an historical situation: Stalin meets six of these seven (role conception as a function, public ends of power, minimal corruption, official ideology, lack of pluralism, and high legitimacy). Where Stalin seems to have fallen short of one of Sondrol's criteria is in lacking personal charisma, although as noted by Philip Boobbyer remarks, among others, Stalin is able to form a personality cult by advancing one for Lenin and connecting himself as the nature evolution in the Soviet leadership.[4]
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[1] Jan T. Gross, Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1988), 117, italics in original.
[2] Ibid, italics in original.
[3] Paul C. Sondrol, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfred Stroessner," Journal of Latin American Studies, 23, no. 3 (1991): 599-620.
[4] Philip Boobyer, The Stalin Era (London: Routledge, 2000), 15-16.
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