Rethinking the Historiography of the Soviet Bloc

The Totalitarianism Paradigm and Institutional Practices under Communism

Manuela Ungureanu

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781836953548
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Addressing polarized narratives of authoritarian control and societal resistance, this volume reconsiders the totalitarianism paradigm in the study of the Soviet Bloc. Historians, philosophers, and literary scholars explore both its enduring explanatory power and its conceptual limits, drawing on insights from social epistemology and the history of social sciences. Case studies on Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the former GDR, Ukraine and the Soviet Union reveal how education, publishing, and cultural production shaped institutional life and intra-bloc interactions. The contributions develop new historiographical standards for understanding the complex interplay between imperial influence and local agency across the diverse societies of the former socialist world, while exploring the potential of various social-theoretical frameworks.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction — Historians Reassess Totalitarianism Theory
• Part I — Main Paradigms and Their Evolving Fortunes
• Chapter 1 — Remarks on the Historiography of Rapid Political and Social Change
• Chapter 2 — Carl Friedrich’s Path to “Totalitarianism”
• Chapter 3 — Soviet Society, Social Structure, and Everyday Life: Major Frameworks Reconsidered
• Chapter 4 — The GDR: A Special Kind of Modern Dictatorship
• Chapter 5 — Totalitarian Syndrome as a Case of an Essentially Contested Concept: An Overview of Discussions Held in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Poland
• Chapter 6 — Framing the Rising Discontent with Totalitarianism Theory: The View from Social Ontology
• Chapter 7 — Totalitarianism and the Historians
• Chapter 8 — Why I Say “Totalitarian Regimes”: A Response to Totalitarianism Denial
• Part II — Approaches to Control, Legitimation of Power, and Forms of Resistance
• Chapter 9 — Beyond Totalitarianism: Rethinking Approaches to the GDR and the Nazi Past
• Chapter 10 — The Soviets Abroad: The NKVD, Itelligence, and State Building in East-Central Europe after the Secod World Wr
• Chapter 11 — Postwar Show Trials: The Apogee of Totalitarianism or Political Processes?
• Chapter 12 — The Communist Public Sphere: A Sociolegal Analysis
• Chapter 13 — Inndustrialization, Independence, Identity: Legitimation of Power in Communist Romania, 1965–1971
• Chapter 14 — Homo Sovieticus and the Greengrocer: On Varieties of Dissident Critique of Post-totalitarian Political Culture
• Chapter 15 — On the Origins of “Totalita”: A Social Epistemology of a Nonconcept
• Part III — Soviet-Style Institutions for Higher Education and Research and the Powers of the New Elites
• Chapter 16 — The Counterintuitive Effects of Soviet Totalitarianism: Soviet Universities during Late Stalinism, 1945–1953
• Chapter 17 — Sergei Vavilov and the Soviet Modes of Science Production
• Chapter 18 — A Friendship inside Romanian Academia under Cultural Stalinism: Mihai Ralea and Tudor Vianu
• Chapter 19 — Gatekeeping Institutions of Literary Translation in Soviet Ukraine
• Chapter 20 — Intellectual Autonomy in Socialist Romania: Theories, Methods, and the Case Study of Sociology after 1966
• Chapter 21 — Writing Contemporary History in Late Socialist Hungary: Dissecting Institutional Legacies
• Chapter 22 — “The Tale of Two Cities”: The Historical Multicultural Bucharest versus the Communist Capital of Romania
• Afterword: The Makings of Rethinking the Historiography of the Soviet Bloc, or How to Take Stock of an Elephant and Still Keep Your Bearings
• Index