1 On the interpretation of totalitarian rule 1919â89
Hans Maier
From the beginning, the emergence of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century has left behind a broad trail of interpretations and analyses by contemporaries of those regimes. This begins with the perception of Communism, Fascism and National Socialism recorded in reports of travellers, journalists, writers and politicians following 1917, 1922 and 1933. It continues in the efforts to discover appropriate descriptions for the new phenomena. And it leads, finally, to larger interpretive patterns. Of these, the concepts of totalitarianism and political religions have become the best known ones.1
At present, there is no consensus in the research concerning these interpretive patterns. Much is still disputed and the discussion is still in progress.2 Contemporary investigations of the despotisms of the twentieth century, however, bear features that differ markedly from the investigations that occurred at the beginning. Fascist Italy, in the meantime, has probably departed from the focus of totalitarianism research definitively. Today, the research concentrates increasingly â indeed, almost exclusively â on the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. With regard to Germany and Russia, research on the Holocaust and the Gulag has trained our gaze on the phenomenon of mass destruction: on processes, therefore, that (not coincidentally) mark the extreme culmination of totalitarian politics. Such processes can hardly be adequately explained in terms of the course of pragmatic events! For its part, the search for motives for the crimes of the Holocaust and Gulag has revived questions as to the ideological impetuses, the historical-philosophical justifications, the pseudo-religious legitimation and absolution of those who committed the deeds. In sum: following a period of intensive (and meritorious!) reconstruction of the facts accompanied by a palpable restraint concerning comprehensive interpretations, a conspicuous interest in gaining an encompassing view stirs again today. We seek to comprehend something we have long since known â something that threatens to remain incomprehensible, even unbelievable, without interpretive help. This renewed interest provides new opportunities for the old interpretive models. It is no coincidence that, after 1989/90, both the theory of totalitarianism and the idea of âpolitical religionsâ have returned to the arena.
The following reflections on the interpretive history of the totalitarian regimes arise from three international symposia on this topic that were held in the years 1994, 1996 and 1999.3 The focus is on three questions. First: what new thing attracted the attention of observers during the beginnings of Communism, Fascism and National Socialism (first section)? Second: how did the corresponding perceptions and terminologies develop (second section)? And third: what has been the yield of the concepts of totalitarianism and political religions in particular (third section)?
Communism, Fascism, National Socialism: the new element
Communism and Fascism were children of war. They developed in a political scene that was dominated by war, civil war, constant battles and paramilitary actions. The context is the most tangible with Russian Communism, which would hardly be conceivable without the military collapse in the West, the conclusion of the peace, the gathering of a âRed Armyâ and the victory in the civil war.4 Mussoliniâs seizure of power also occurred in an atmosphere charged with a civil-war like situation, however, and was consciously stylised as a âMarch on Romeâ in the military sense. Nor did Hitler, appearing a little later, lack his squadri5 â the âbrown battalionsâ whose terrorist energies unfurled in the streets and squares.6
The power that World War I7 unleashed gained a prolonged, dark permanence with the modern despotic regimes. These often seemed to be demonstrations of a continually expanding âtotal mobilisationâ.8 The military infiltrated the civil structures and transformed them. A militaristic friend-enemy mentality now presided in the state interior too. With every conflict driven to the point of an existential âeither-orâ, power no longer rested on the foundation of law, but on the end of the bayonet. And because all things involving war entail a hint of the arbitrary, an element of the toss of the dice comes into politics: everything might be won or lost with a coup; one might fall into oblivion or be carried up to the heights of power and greatness. The magnification, intensification and vitalisation of political power distinguish the modern despotisms from the nineteenth-century constitutional state, with its distribution of powers. To an equal extent, the uniformed dictator and his military retinue are distinct from the civil statesman and civil service of a democracy. The warlike all-or-nothing transports politics from an activity of advising, consideration and decision into one of war â victory and defeat are involved. In the extreme case, there are only the dead and the survivors in the end.
The exaltation of politics, its elevation above the state of normality, becomes clear in the statements of contemporaries of this phenomenon. For Nikolai Nikolayevitch Suchanov, for example, the Petersburg Soviet is âlike the Roman senate, which the ancient Carthagians once held to be a council of the gods. Such a mass ⊠could in fact tempt one to attempt to illuminate old Europe with the light of the Socialist Revolutionâ.9 Although Fedor
Stepun had portrayed the âinsane-likeâ quality of the Russian situation like hardly any other, he still calls the October Revolution an âexceedingly significant Russian topicâ, estimating that âsome primordial, typical hour begins to strike for Russia, so that perhaps it steps into the meaning of its madnessâ.10 The popular poet, Demyan Bedny, sees the Soviet person looming up in the streets of the large city like a giant Leviathan composed of many individuals:
Feet of millions: one body. The plaster cracks.
Masses of millions: one heart, one will, one step!
In time, in time!
They are marching forward. They are marching forward.
March march ⊠11
Little wonder that the Bolshevists were regarded beyond the Russian borders â and above all, in Germany â as ascetic soldiers of the Revolution, Dostoyevskian heroes, âpointers of new pathsâ, âreformers of universal humanityâ. In his diary, Harry Graf Kessler reports of a visit to Walter Rathenau in February of 1919:
for Bolshevism, he let a strong affection shine through. It is a magnificent system, he says, and one to which the future will likely belong. In one hundred years, the world will be Bolshevistic. Contemporary Bolshevism resembles a wonderful play at the theatre ⊠By night he is a Bolshevist, he says; but by day, when he sees our workers and administrators, he is not â or not yet (he repeated the ânot yetâ several times).12
Similar statements can be found in the work of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, of KĂ€the Kollwitz and Alfred Kerr. This is to say nothing of such emphatic âfellow travellersâ as Herbert G Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Lion Feuchtwanger, AndrĂ© Gide and others, whose long procession towards Moscow had already set itself in motion in 1920, in the midst of the civil war.13
The receptions of Mussoliniâs âMarch on Romeâ and Hitlerâs âseizure of powerâ are more sober. Although messianic undertones are entirely present in both Italy and Germany, they are lacking among foreign observers. Nevertheless: the features of âmobilisationâ, of the marching and parading force that has broken loose from its administrative and parliamentary enclosures, were clearly perceived. Predominantly Anglo-Saxon observers noted the emergence of a naked power that is no longer domesticated by a constitutional and party state. Because it is omnipresent, flooding everything with images, symbols, banners, speeches and fanfares, it is a power that can no longer be evaded. On 6 January 1932 in Rome, Harold Nicolson entered the following into his diary:
spent the day for the most part reading Fascist pamphlets. They have, in any case, transformed the entire country into an army. One is pressed into the Fascist mould from the cradle to the grave; no one can escape it. On paper, this all seems very virtuous and impressive. But I ask myself how the life of the individual looks. This I will not be able to say before I have lived in Italy for a certain period of time. To the extent that it destroys individuality, in any case, a socialist experiment is involved. It also destroys freedom. If someone first prescribes for you how you should think, then he immediately also prescribes how you should conduct yourself. With such a system, I confess, a measure of energy and effectiveness can be attained such as we, on our island, do not attain. And yet, and yet ⊠The whole thing is a pyramid set on its head.14