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Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition

Vladislav Zubok, Tommaso Piffer (eds)

Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition

Essays in Memory of Victor Zaslavsky

This book is a tribute to the memory of Victor Zaslavsky (1937–2009), sociologist, émigré from the Soviet Union, Canadian citizen, public intellectual, and keen observer of Eastern Europe. In seventeen essays leading European, American and Russian scholars discuss the theory and the history of totalitarian society with a comparative approach. They revisit and reassess what Zaslavsky considered the most important project in the latter part of his life: the analysis of Eastern European - especially Soviet societies and their difficult “transition” after the fall of communism in 1989–91. The variety of the contributions reflects the diversity of specialists in the volume, but also reveals Zaslavsky's gift: he surrounded himself with talented people from many different fields and disciplines. In line with Zaslavsky's work and scholarly method, the book promotes new theoretical and methodological approaches to the concept of totalitarianism for understanding Soviet and East European societies, and the study of fascist and communist regimes in general.
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Editors

Vladislav Zubok

Vladislav Zubok is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. Among his publications are Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Stalin to Putin (with Eric Shiraev, Palgrave Press, 2000); Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia (Harvard University Press, 2009); The Idea of Russia. The Life and the Works of Dmitry Likhachev (I. B. Tauris, 2016).

Tommaso Piffer

Tommaso Piffer is the Bodossakis Research Fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge and an affiliate of the Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Title
Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition
Subtitle
Essays in Memory of Victor Zaslavsky
Editors
Translator
Riccardo James Vargiu
Price
€ 158,99
ISBN
9789633861325
Format
eBook PDF (Adobe DRM)
Number of pages
442
Language
English
Publication date
Category
Sociology and Social History
Discipline
Social and Political Sciences
Imprint
Also available as
Hardback - € 159,00
Table of Contents
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1. Introduction
T. Piffer and V. Zubok

PART I: Theory and Debate
2. Movement, Formation, and Maintenance in the Soviet Union
Victor Zaslavsky’s Challenge to the Arendtian Theory of Totalitarianism
Peter Baehr
3. European Liberalism in the Age of Totalitarianism
Giovanni Orsina
4. Totalitarismum ante litteram
Vittorio Strada
5. Totalitarian Dictators and Ideological Hubris
Vladimir Tismaneanu
6. From Facts to Words
From the Party Militia to Fascist Totalitarianism
Emilio Gentile

PART II: History and Society
7. Stalin as a Statesman
A Historian’s Notes
Vladimir Pechatnov
8. Stalin’s Dictatorship
Priorities, Policies, and Results
Oleg Khlevniuk
9. The “National Question” in the Soviet Union
Andrea Graziosi
10. The Katyn Case
History and Articulation of Official Discourse in Russia
Inessa Yazhborovskaia
11. Totalitarianism and Science
The Nazi and the Soviet Experience
David Holloway
12. From Fascism to Communism
The History of a Conversion
Maria Teresa Giusti

PART III: Beyond Totalitarianism
13. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vasily Grossman
Slavophile and Westernizer Against the Totalitarian Soviet State
Veljco Vujacic,
14. “Without a free word, there are no free men”
Lydia Chukovskaya’s Writings on Terror and Censorship
Antonella d’Amelia
15. The Transition from Totalitarianism to Authoritarianism in Russia
Lev Gudkov
16. Totalitarianism, Nationalism, and Challenges for Democratic Transition
Gail Lapidus
17. Public Memory and the Difficulty of Overcoming the Communist Legacy
Poland and Russia in Comparative Perspective
Mark Kramer

List of Contributors
Index

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