Totalitarianism

by Leonard Schapiro

Genres: Politics

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro was a British academic and scholar of Russian politics. He taught for many years at the London School of Economics, where he was Professor of Political Science with Special Reference to Russian Studies.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book in the Key Concepts in Political Science series which seeks to link the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin under the umbrella of totalitarianism.
The concepts seem to be flexible enough to catch each of the regimes but whether that flexibility is rigorous or opportunistic each reader will have to decide.
The current orthodoxy of equating communism and naziism is reductive and dispiriting and whilst the author seems to be prepared to acknowledge that Communism and Stalinism are not the same the book plays fast and loose with language and terminology.
Still the arguments are clearly and concisely made and the book does try to pin down what totalitarianism is.

[Martín Álvarez Rodríguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Más serio y elaborado que el panfleto de Ebenstein, incluso más sistemático que el libro clásico de Arendt, pero aún así de un gran abuso de teorización politológico, con un conocimiento histórico bastante pobre, sobre todo en lo referente a la Unión Soviética.