RISE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF LIBERAL TOTALITARIANISM

Aviezer Tucker's book, which masterfully chronicles the tenacity of totalitarian legacies across post-communist Europe, arrives at an opportune time. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, many observers enthusiastically proclaimed the ideological victory of neoliberal economics and democratic governance over centralized planning and coercive political authority. This initial optimism, however, proved misplaced. Expectations that the whole of the post-communist space would eventually converge institutionally (and attitudinally) with Western Europe have been receding for well over a decade now, the teleological conceit embodied in viewing the events of 1989/1991 as a " catching-up revolution " (Habermas 1990) or a metaphorical " end of history " (Fukuyama 1992) withering away in the face of mounting evidence that the liberalizing reforms uniformly prescribed for the region were not as societally penetrative or durable as once anticipated. Noting that democratic practices and liberal norms did not take substantive hold in a number of these states is not a new observation, of course. Already in 2002 Thomas Carothers warned that the transition paradigm had exceeded its expiration date, post-communist polities by this time having sorted themselves into three distinct outcome categories: those possessed of relatively liberal regimes that appeared to be effectively integrating into the wider European community; those requiring adjectival modifiers to denote their persistent democratic deficits; and those, such as Belarus or Turkmenistan, that had rapidly lapsed into new flavors of dictatorial rule (the latter are not considered by Tucker). Moreover, in recent years even the liberal democratic credentials of countries like Poland—not long ago regarded as an undeniable success story of the post-Soviet transition— have been increasingly called into question. Consequently, both former communist states that never became full-fledged democracies, as well as those that did but that currently face growing populist and anti-liberal challenges, figure prominently in this volume. At its core, Tucker's argument is straightforward: instead of representing a radical break with the past, post-communist realities often bear a striking resemblance to what came before, totalitarian legacies revealing themselves in new guises but bringing about familiar results. This is a different tale than Westerners are used to hearing, but it rings depressingly true, implying that the real question in need of answering is not why some attempted transitions to liberal democracy failed, but why we believed they would succeed in the first place. A refreshingly original work of political theory that defies easy categorization, this ambitious book is a self-described foray into " middle-duration processes. " As such, Tucker states upfront that he is neither interested in analyzing deeper structural factors nor country-specific experiences with communism and its aftereffects. The same holds for exogenous influences, such as global economic trends and the eastward expansion of the European Union. Instead, he focuses his gaze on

Perspectives on Politics, 2017

The concept of totalitarianism emerged between the two world wars in twentieth-century Europe to become a central concept of Cold War social science designed to highlight similarities between the Nazi and Soviet regimes and implicitly to contrast these forms of dictatorship with liberal democracy. While in the 1960s and 1970s many critics challenged the concept’s Cold War uses as an ideology of “the West,” the idea of totalitarianism and later “post-totalitarianism” played important roles in East Central Europe, where they helped dissident intellectuals, academics, and activists both to understand and to challenge Soviet-style communism. The concept of “totalitarianism” remains heavily contested. But whatever one thinks about the concept’s social scientific validity, there can be no doubt that it played a crucial role in both the scholarship of communism and the public intellectual debates about the possibilities of post-communism. Aviezer Tucker’s The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A...

Totalitarianism, unlike many other doctrines and political theories, it was stated later in the scientific and academic fields. His study asserted simultaneously to contemporary historical events that could not be included in older doctrinal and theoretical classifications. Like most of these new terms, linked to contingent historical circumstances, it inspired a myriad of interpretations, sometimes even opposed to each other, before arriving at a "peace" amongst scholars in accepting this new definition of a new kind of political regime. According to this analysis, I will be explained what totalitarianism is, how the concept has evolved and which of the many models or theories take as an evaluation criterion, to be able to apply it to the practical case. The task here is to revive the term, without considering the interpretation "right" or "better" than the other. Answering the question of what is the most useful, the most functional to the work that is the most important reason to be this paper.

Revisiting the concept of totalitarianism, together with and in spite of Slavoj Zizek, has utmost importance at a time when the post-9/11 world takes on totalitarian forms. These forms seem to escape both the logic of ‘‘everyday totalitarianism,’’ as elaborated by Zizek, and that of ‘‘Empire,’’ described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

2016

At the time of his death, in 1984, communist leader Enrico Berlinguer’s political appeal and popularity was at its apogee in Italy. Deputy leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1969, and then leader from 1972 until his death, Berlinguer had been one of the most loved politicians of the history of the Italian Republic, a man of recognised unselfishness whose integrity, as Donald Sassoon memorably put it ‘was doubted only by those who had none’.1 Under his leadership, the party had reached the peak of its electoral popularity, winning 34.4% of the votes at the national elections of 1976. Arguably, because of the emotion produced in the country by his dramatic death – he suffered a massive stroke while delivering a speech at an electoral meeting – the PCI gained the only victory over Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in its history, at the European elections of June 1984. More than one million people attended Berlinguer’s funeral in Rome.2 That event, broadcast live by the Italian p...

Postmodern Openings, 2015

The concept of totalitarianism is, undoubtedly, one of the most disputed terms in political language. This article investigates the conflict between the classical interpretations of totalitarian system that was frequently seen from the monolithic and revisionist perspective which offered some pluralistic models of Soviet and Nazi systems. The main purpose of the article is to show that, in this frame of the debates, the monolithic understanding of totalitarianism was inaccurate, therefore damaging the concept itself.

Routledge eBooks, 2018

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Central European Journal of International and Security Studies , 2019

The symposium on the book "Legacies of Totalitarianism" by Aviezer Tucker was part of the conference "Between Enslavement and Resistance: Attitudes toward Communism in East European Societies (1945-1989)" held in Poznań, Poland (June 15-16, 2018). The conference and the symposium was organized by the Institute of National Remembrance, Poznań Division, the Institute of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, The Centre for Culture and the Arts at Leeds Beckett University, and the Poznań Division of Polish Philosophical Society. The organizational and editorial work of the symposium was realized within the framework of the Branch Research Project of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poznań: "The Methodological and Theoretical Problems of Research on the Current History of Poland." Content: Krzysztof Brzechczyn, A Transformation of the Privileges of the Authorities into Property Rights or a Transformation of the Types of Class Rule?" Dragoş Petrescu, "Limits of democratic consolidation: Subversion of reason as a post-totalitarian syndrome" Michał Kwiecień, " The Hereditary Diseases of Post-Totalitarianism" Cristina Petrescu, "Simulated Change: Totalitarianism and what Comes Next" Grzegorz Greg Lewicki, Legacies, zombies and the need of long-term basis for short-term foresight" Rafał Paweł Wierzchosławski , "Dissidents and Nomads in [not only] Post-Totalitarian Countries – Why Are There so Many Problems If Things Are Going so Well?" Aviezer Tucker Harvard University)," Why 'Legacies' Matter: Reply to readings of 'Legacies;"

History of Political Thought, 2015

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How did The Origin of Totalitarianism (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 1951) become a seminal work, how was it received by the broader culture, and how it does it continue to be relevant within the modern political science and political philosophy zeitgeist? While Arendt’s work is thoughtfully written in prose and structure, one can note a mixture of passion and anger. In elucidating the same masses that were either actively or silently complicit in the rise of authoritarian states across the globe, she is careful to highlight the threats that their veiled anti-semitism had in the formulation and execution of the authoritarian states of the now vanquished Nazi Germany and still ascendant Soviet Union. She strove to illustrate how something as accepted, even mildly, as the dehumanization or othering of a sector of the people could be spun into and out into a spasm of domination and fear. In this striving, she succeeded.