Editing Totalitarianism (section)

==== Criticism and analysis ====
[[File:Leon Trotsky, 1930s.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Leon Trotsky]] formulated a concept of totalitarianism in his analysis of the USSR in the 1930s.]]
In the interwar period ''totalitarianism'' emerged as a term used in criticism and analysis of dictatorships of the time. In this critical period, the term began to be used to describe fascism and later became a ground of comparison of fascist states and the Soviet Union, but was not understood as an element of a single liberal-totalitarian dychotomy and as something opposite to liberal democracy.<ref name="trav2"/>

In the 1930s, left-wing critics of Stalinism began applying the term to the Soviet state and use it to compare it to fascist states. [[Leon Trotsky]] was one of the first<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DAxVjDG4p_0C | title=Power: Its Forms, Bases, and Uses | isbn=978-1-4128-3165-9 | last1=Wrong | first1=Dennis Hume | publisher=Transaction Publishers }}</ref> to do so, thus producing perhaps most famous example of such usage of the term by a left-wing anti-Stalinist dissident.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RF3LFMID9k8C | title=The Lost Debate: German Socialist Intellectuals and Totalitarianism | isbn=978-0-252-06796-9 | last1=Jones | first1=William David | date=1999 | publisher=University of Illinois Press }}</ref> It seems that the first to use the term towards the USSR was the writer and left-wing activist [[Victor Serge]], who did it shortly before his arrest in the USSR in a letter published in France. The same year, Trotsky compared fascist and Soviet bureaucracies, describing both as parasitic, and later stated that "in the last period the Soviet bureaucracy has familiarised itself with many traits of victorious fascism, first of all by getting rid of the control of the party and establishing the cult of the leader." In ''[[The Revolution Betrayed]]'' (1936), Trotsky began using the term "totalitarian" to analyse the USSR and compare it with Fascism, attributing to totalitarianism, rooted in "the dilatoriness of the world proletariat in solving the problems set for it by history", such features as concentration of power in the hands of a single individual, the abolition of popular control over the leadership, the use of extreme repression, and the elimination of contending loci of power; later he included "the suppression of all freedom to criticize; the subjection of the accused to the military; examining magistrates, a prosecutor and judge in one; a monolithic press whose howlings terrorize the accused and hypnotize public opinion"; Trotsky wrote that the USSR "had become "totalitarian" in character several years before this word arrived from Germany." However, his concept was much less defined than the one of the Cold War theorists, and he would have disagreed with their core points: that 'central control and direction of the entire economy' was applicable to fascism, and would have rejected their tendency to depict 'totalitarian' societies as politically monolithic and inherently static, as well as their anti-communist perspective and their description of Lenin as a totalitarian dictator;<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3o2fAwAAQBAJ | title=Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy | isbn=978-90-04-26953-8 | last1=Twiss | first1=Thomas M. | date=8 May 2014 | publisher=BRILL }}</ref> scholars even argued that for him it was a pejorative, not a sociologal concept based on equating Fascism and socialism, like it was for Cold War theorists.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kc1oAAAAMAAJ | title=The Trotsky Reappraisal | isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 | last1=Brotherstone | first1=Terry | last2=Dukes | first2=Paul | date=1992 }}</ref>
[[File:Carriers of the New Black Plague.jpg|thumb|1938 satirical illustration "Carriers of the New Black Plague" by [[William Cotton (artist)|William Cotton]]; the caption mentions "Totalitarian Eclipse" threatening democracy.]]
One of the first people to use the term ''totalitarianism'' in the English language was Austrian writer [[Franz Borkenau]] in his 1938 book ''The Communist International'', in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Nemoianu |first=Virgil |date=December 1982 |title=Review of ''End and Beginnings'' |journal=Modern Language Notes |volume=97 |issue=5 |pages=1235–1238}}</ref> The label ''totalitarian'' was twice affixed to Nazi Germany during [[Winston Churchill]]'s speech of 5 October 1938 before the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]], in opposition to the [[Munich Agreement]], by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the [[Sudetenland]].<ref>{{cite speech |last=Churchill |first=Winston |author-link=Winston Churchill |title=The Munich Agreement |date=5 October 1938 |location=[[House of Commons of the United Kingdom]] |publisher=International Churchill Society |url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-munich-agreement |access-date=7 August 2020 |language=English |quote=We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. Many of those countries, in fear of the rise of the Nazi power, ... loathed the idea of having this arbitrary rule of the totalitarian system thrust upon them, and hoped that a stand would be made. |archive-date=26 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626193227/https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-munich-agreement/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Churchill was then a [[backbencher]] MP representing the [[Epping (UK Parliament constituency)|Epping constituency]]. In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny."<ref>{{cite speech |last=Churchill |first=Winston |author-link=Winston Churchill |title=Broadcast to the United States and to London |date=16 October 1938 |publisher=International Churchill Society |url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace |access-date=7 August 2020 |archive-date=25 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200925195010/https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-the-wilderness/the-defence-of-freedom-and-peace/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The concept gained legitimacy in 1939 with the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]], after which it became accepted, at least until 1941, to present Stalin and Hitler as "twin dictators" and call Nazism "brown Bolshevism" and Stalinism "red Fascism". The same year, scholars of various disciplines held the first international symposium on totalitarianism in Philadelphia.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jmeBDwAAQBAJ | title=The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right | isbn=978-1-78873-046-4 | last1=Traverso | first1=Enzo | date=29 January 2019 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref><ref name="trav"/> The concept was abandoned in 1941, as the Third Reich [[Operation Barbarossa|invaded the USSR]], and the latter became depicted in Western propaganda as "valiant freedom-loving" ally in the war;<ref name="dos">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MeKzEAAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-6669-3090-0 | title=Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union | date=20 March 2023 | publisher=Rowman & Littlefield }}</ref> among the major productions of pro-Stalinist Western propaganda was the film ''[[Mission to Moscow]]'' (1943), based on the 1941 book of the same name.<ref name="suny"/>

In the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945), in the lecture series (1945) and book (1946) titled ''The Soviet Impact on the Western World'', the British historian [[E. H. Carr]] said that "the trend away from [[individualism]] and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" in the [[Decolonization|decolonising]] countries of [[Eurasia]]. That [[proletarian revolution|revolutionary]] Marxism–Leninism was the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by the USSR's [[Industrialization in the Soviet Union|rapid industrialisation]] (1929–1941) and the [[Great Patriotic War]] (1941–1945) that defeated Nazi Germany. That, despite those achievements in social engineering and warfare, in dealing with the countries of the [[Communist bloc]] only the "blind and incurable" ideologue could ignore the Communist régimes' trend towards police-state totalitarianism in their societies.<ref>{{cite book |last=Laqueur |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Laqueur |date=1987 |title=The Fate of the Revolution |location=New York |publisher=Scribner |page=131 |isbn=0684189038}}</ref>

Politically matured by having fought and been wounded and survived the Spanish Civil War, in the essay "[[Why I Write]]" (1946), the socialist George Orwell said, "the Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for [[democratic socialism]], as I understand it." That future totalitarian régimes would spy upon their societies and use the mass communications media to perpetuate their dictatorships, that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Orwell |first=George |author-link=George Orwell |date=1946 |title=Why I Write |url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 |magazine=[[Gangrel (magazine)|Gangrel]] |access-date=7 August 2020 |archive-date=25 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200725130413/http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 |url-status=live }}</ref>