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.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Historians Reassess Totalitarianism Theory
Manuela L. Ungureanu
Part I: Main Paradigms and their Evolving Fortunes
Chapter
1. Remarks on the Historiography of Rapid Political and Social
Change
Daniel Little
Chapter
2. Carl Friedrichs Path to Totalitarianism
Stephen Turner
Chapter
3. Soviet Society, Social Structure, and Everyday Life: Major
Frameworks Reconsidered
Mark Edele
Chapter
4. The GDR: A Special Kind of Modern Dictatorship
Jürgen Kocka
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
Krzysztof Brzechczyn
Chapter
6. Framing the Rising Discontent with Totalitarianism Theory: The
View from Social Ontology
Manuela L. Ungureanu
Chapter
7. Totalitarianism and the Historians
Charles Turner
Chapter
8. Why I say Totalitarian Regimes: A Response to Totalitarianism
Denial
Aviezer Tucker
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
Mary Fulbrook
Chapter
10. The Soviets Abroad: The NKVD, Intelligence, and State Building
in East-Central Europe after World War II
Molly Pucci
Chapter
11. Postwar Show Trials: The Apogee of Totalitarianism or Political
Processes?
Barbara J. Falk
Chapter
12. The Communist Public Sphere: A Sociolegal Analysis
Mihaela erban
Chapter
13. Industrialization, Independence, Identity: Legitimation of Power
in Communist Romania, 19651971
Drago Petrescu
Chapter
14. Homo Sovieticus and the Greengrocer: On Varieties of Dissident
Critique of Post-Totalitarian Political Culture
Piotr Wcilik
Chapter
15. On the Origins of Totalita: A Social Epistemology of a
Non-Concept
Muriel Blaive
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
Benjamin Tromly
Chapter
17. Sergei Vavilov and the Soviet Modes of Science Production
Alexei Kojevnikov
Chapter
18. A Friendship Inside Romanian Academia under Cultural Stalinism:
Mihai Ralea and Tudor Vianu
Cristian Vasile
Chapter
19. Gatekeeping Institutions of Literary Translation in Soviet
Ukraine
Valentyna Savchyn
Chapter
20. Intellectual Autonomy in Socialist Romania: Theories, Methods,
and the Case Study of Sociology after 1966
Adela Hîncu
Chapter
21. Writing Contemporary History in Late Socialist Hungary:
Dissecting Institutional Legacies
Réka Krizmanics
Chapter
22. The Tale of Two Cities: The Historical Multicultural Bucharest
Vs. the Communist Capital of Romania
Cristina Petrescu
Afterword: The Makings of Rethinking the Historiography of the Soviet Bloc
or How to Take Stock of an Elephant, and Still Keep Your Bearings
Manuela L. Ungureanu
Index
Manuela Ungureanu is associate professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She has published on Donald Davidsons interpretation theory and has examined issues in the philosophy of language following Chomskys universal grammar. Her work, which is at the interface between cognitive psychology and social epistemology, has appeared in journals such as Dialogue and AVANT as well as edited volumes including Romanian Studies in the Philosophy of Science (2015) and From an Analytical Point of View (2025).
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