Genesis of western concepts of totalitarianism: a historical and methodological analysis

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze the genesis of scientific concepts of the phenomenon of totalitarianism during the second half of the ХХ th - first third of the ХХІ th century through the prism of the structural matrix of characteristic features and peculiarities of its manifestation in Europe and the USSR. Research methodology. The proposed study is based on the use of a historical and comparative approach to understanding the phenomenon of “totalitarianism”. The main basis for the work was a classification analysis of the available literature, which was studied taking into account several time periods: the period after World War II to the present. The scientific novelty of the study is an attempt to analyze the concepts of totalitarianism proposed by contemporary Western intellectuals, in particular, scholars from Poland, Italy and Germany, through the prism of comparing them with the classical concepts of the second half of the twentieth century. Conclusions. The results of our scientific work give grounds to conclude that the process of studying the phenomenon of totalitarianism is discrete. Its intensification and waning of scholarly interest are synchronized with global socio-political changes. The optics of scholarly interest in “totalitarianism” has shifted in different periods from the classical liberal concept to the post-totalitarian theory of the authoritarian state. European studies of the totalitarian phenomenon make it possible to identify and explain the reasons for the spread and popularity of totalitarian ideas and views, which, having been formalized into a certain system of values, meet the needs of political authorities to justify the goals related to consolidating their economic and political dominance and expanding their spheres of influence. Obviously, the direct revival of political and legal systems with a developed “machine” of political terror is hardly possible, but ideologies that serve as the ideological basis of totalitarian regimes are very resilient and capable of a kind of modernization, as exemplified by the ideology of ruscism. Totalitarianism, as a historical phenomenon, is not a complete event for us, since most of the countries in which the process of dismantling totalitarian political structures began in the early 1990s are still in a state of “transition.” First of all, this concerns the public consciousness, which is carried by a person formed by a totalitarian system.