Examples of totalitarian regimes

{{main|Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism}}

{{npov-section|reason=Equating Nazis with the Soviet Union is a problematic approach. This not the place for a comparative study. There should be two sections one for each regime.|date=March 2025}}

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Soviet Union during the period of Joseph Stalin's rule, along with Nazi Germany, was a "modern example" of a totalitarian state, being among "the first examples of decentralized or popular totalitarianism, in which the state achieved overwhelming popular support for its leadership." This contrasted with earlier totalitarian states that were imposed on the people;{{cite web|date=2018 |title=Totalitarianism |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica}} "every aspect of the Soviet Union's political, economic, cultural, and intellectual life came to be regulated by the Communist Party in a strict and regimented fashion that would tolerate no opposition". According to Peter Rutland (1993), with the death of Stalin, "this was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one."{{cite book|last=Rutland |first=Peter |year=1993 |title=The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union: The Role of Local Party Organs in Economic Management |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-39241-9 |page=9 |quote=after 1953 ...This was still an oppressive regime, but not a totalitarian one.}} This view is echoed by Igor Krupnik (1995), "The era of 'social engineering' in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself."{{cite book |doi=10.4324/9781315036205 |title=Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union |date=2016 |isbn=978-1-135-20510-2 |editor-last1=Ro'i |editor-first1=Yaacov |chapter=Soviet Cultural and Ethnic Policies towards Jews: A Legacy Reassessed |first1=Igor |last1=Krupnik |quote-page=70 |quote=The era of 'social engineering' in the Soviet Union ended with the death of Stalin in 1953 or soon after; and that was the close of the totalitarian regime itself.}} According to Klaus von Beyme (2014), "The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule."{{cite book|first=Klaus |last=von Beyme |author-link=Klaus von Beyme |year=2014 |title=On Political Culture, Cultural Policy, Art and Politics |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-319-01559-0 |page=65 |quote=The Soviet Union after the death of Stalin moved from totalitarianism to authoritarian rule.}}

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin are the two main exemplary cases, on the grounds of comparison of which the concept of totalitarianism was founded.{{cite book |last1=Kershaw |first1=Ian|author-link1=Ian Kershaw|last2=Lewin |first2=Moshe|author-link2=Moshe Lewin |title=Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison |date=28 April 1997 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-56521-9|language=en}} The historians who claim that these dictatorships were not totalitarian often reject or doubt the concept of totalitarianism itself.

For example, Eric Hobsbawm, rejects the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship because of its operation, although Stalin indeed wanted to achieve total control of the population, and this conclusion, as he says, "throws considerable doubt on the usefulness of the term".{{cite book |last1=Zubok |first1=Vladislav |title=Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition: Essays in memory of Victor Zaslavsky |date=2017 |publisher=Central European University Press |isbn=978-963-386-130-1 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}} Such revisionist historians as Sheila Fitzpatrick openly rejected both the description of Stalinism as a totalitarian dictatorship and the term "totalitarianism".{{Cite book |last1=Riasanovsky |first1=Nicholas Valentine |author-link1=Nicholas V. Riasanovsky |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofrussia0000rias_l2q3 |title=A History of Russia |last2=Steinberg |first2=Mark D. |author-link2=Mark D. Steinberg |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-1953-4197-3 |edition=8th |location=New York Oxford |page=468}} The historian Robert Service in his biography of Stalin wrote that "this was not a totalitarian dictatorship as conventionally defined because Stalin lacked the capacity, even at the height of his power, to secure automatic universal compliance with his wishes."{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Stalin: A Biography |date=2005 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-01697-2 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

The historian Gordon A. Craig disputed that the Third Reich was a totalitarian state, unless "in a limited measure": "Except for the Jews, toward whom Hitler had an obsessive hatred , and former and potential dissidents, and homosexuals and Gypsies, most people, at least until the war years, remained surprisingly unrestrained by state control." Such historians as Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw openly rejected the concept of totalitarianism in analysis of the Third Reich. Stanley Payne argues that "totalitarianism in terms of total control of institutions is a construct that accurately describes only the most extreme Stalinist type of socialist dictatorships (and possibly the final phase of Nazi Germany)."{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Stanley G. |title=The Franco Regime, 1936–1975 |date=2011 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Pres |isbn=978-0-299-11073-4 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

{{see also|Russian Revolution#Hisstoriography|October Revolution#Historiography}}

Britannica and various authors noted that the policies of Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, contributed to the establishment of a totalitarian system in the USSR,{{cite web|title=Leninism |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Leninism |access-date=21 August 2021 |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |language=en}} but while some authors, such as Leszek Kolakowski, believed Stalinist totalitarianism to be a continuation of Leninism{{cite book |doi=10.4324/9780203087848 |title=The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth Century Europe |date=2006 |last1=Roberts |first1=David |isbn=978-0-203-08784-8 }}{{page needed|date=January 2025}} and directly called Lenin's government the first totalitarian regime to appear,{{cite journal|last=Riley |first=Alexander |date=October 2019 |title=Lenin and His Revolution: The First Totalitarian |journal=Society |language=en |volume=56 |issue=5 |pages=503–511 |doi=10.1007/s12115-019-00405-1}} other authors, including Hannah Arendt, argued that there was rupture between Stalinist totaliarianism and Leninism, and that Leninism offered other various outcomes besides Stalinism, including "a mere one-party dictatorship as opposed to full-blown totalitarianism." Arendt believed Stalinist totalitarianism to be a part of a hypernational historically specific phenomenon which also included Nazism.

The debate on whether Lenin's regime was totalitarian is a part of a debate between the so-called "totalitarian, or "traditionalist" (and "neo-traditionalist"), school", rooted in the early years of the Cold War and also described as "conservative" and "anti-Communist" by Ronald Suny, and the so-called "revisionists"; the former is represented by such historians as Richard Pipes. To Pipes, not just Stalinism was a mere continuation of Leninism, but more to it, "the Russia of 1917–1924 was no less 'totalitarian' than the Russia of the 1930s"; Pipes compared Lenin to Adolf Hitler and described the former as a precursor of the latter: "not only totalitarianism, but Nazism and the Holocaust has a Russian and a Leninist pedigree." The core idea of the "totalitarian approach" is that the Bolshevik Revolution was something artificial and imposed from above by a small group of intellectuals with brute force and "depended on one man", and that Soviet totalitarianism resulted from a "blueprint" of the ideology of the Bolsheviks, the violent culture of Russia, and supposedly deviant personalities of Bolshevik leaders.{{cite book |last1=Ryan |first1=James |title=Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence |date=2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-67396-9 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}} The "revisionists" opposed such claims and put an emphasis on history "from below" and on the genuinely "popular" nature of the 1917 Revolution, paid much more attention to social history as opposed to the "traditional" approach which centres on politics, ideology and personalities of the leaders, and they tended to see a discontinuity between Leninism and Stalinism, with the worst excesses of the latter being explained by the economic experiments of the late 1920s, by the threat of war with Nazi Germany and by the personality of Stalin. The "traditionalists" and "neo-traditionalists", in their turn, dismissed such approach emphasising social history as Marxist.{{Cite book |last=Mawdsley |first=Evan |author-link=Evan Mawdsley |title=The Russian Civil War|year=2011|publisher=Birlinn |isbn=9780857901231}}Ronald Suny. Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians and the Russian Revolution (Verso Books, 2017).

{{main|Fascist Italy|Italian Fascism}}

{{stub section|date=February 2025}}

According to Kei Hiruta, it is a popular, yet contested, position in historiography today to exclude Fascist Italy from the list of totalitarian regimes. Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism disputes that Italy was a totalitarian state,{{cite book |last1=Hiruta |first1=Kei |title=Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity |date=21 November 2023 |isbn=978-0-691-22612-5 |publisher=Princeton University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3urAEAAAQBAJ |access-date=2025-04-24}}{{pn|date=February 2025}} at least until 1938.{{cite book |last1=Badie |first1=Bertrand |last2=Berg-Schlosser |first2=Dirk |last3=Morlino |first3=Leonardo |title=International Encyclopedia of Political Science |date=2011 |publisher=SAGE |isbn=978-1-4129-5963-6 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

{{main|Francoist Spain|First Francoism}}

During the Spanish Civil War and the early years of its existence, the regime of Francisco Franco embraced the ideal of a totalitarian state propagated by the Italian Fascists, the Nazis and the Spanish Falangists the and applied the term 'totalitarian' towards itself, when Franco's rhetoric was influenced by the one of Falangism. Franco stressed the "missionary and totalitarian" nature of the new state that was under construction "as in other countries of totalitarian regime", these being Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; the ideologues of Francoism formed a concept of totalitarianism as an essentially Spanish method of state organization. In 1942, Franco stopped using the term towards his regime and called for struggle with "Bolshevist totalitarianism".{{cite book |last1=Gleason |first1=Abbott |title=Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War |date=1997 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-028148-9 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

The Franco regime was commonly defined as totalitarian and as a Spanish variation of Fascism until 1964, when Juan Linz challenged this model and instead described Francoism as "authoritarian" because of its "limited degree of political pluralism" caused by struggle between 'Francoist families' (Falangists, Carlists, etc.) within the sole legal party FET y de las JONS and the Movimiento Nacional and by other such features as lack of 'totalitarian' ideology. The definition proposed by Linz became an object of a major debate among sociologists, political scientists and historians, some critics felt that this revision could be understood as a form of acquittal of the Franco regime as it focused on the more benevolent character of the regime in its developmental phase and did not concern its early phase (often called "First Francoism"). Later debates focused on Fascism rather than arguing whether Francoism was totalitarian; some historians wrote that it was a typical conservative military dictatorship, contemporary historians stress its Fascist component and describe it as para-Fascist or a regime of unfinished fascization which evolved to a merely authoritarian regime during the Cold War. While Enrique Moradiellos contends that "it is now increasingly rare to define Francoism as a truly fascist and totalitarian regime", although he writes that the debates on Francoism haven't finished yet,{{cite book |last1=Sangster |first1=Andrew |title=Probing the Enigma of Franco |date=2018 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-5275-2014-1 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}}{{cite book |last1=Moradiellos |first1=Enrique |title=Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator |date=2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-78672-300-0 }}{{pn|date=February 2025}} Ismael Saz notes that "it has also begun to be recognised that" Francoism underwent a "totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian, fascist or quasi-fascist" phase.{{Cite book |last=Saz |first=Ismael |author-link=Ismael Saz |title=Fascismo y Franquismo |publisher=Universitat de València |year=2004 |isbn=978-84-370-5910-5 |location=València |language=es}}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

The contemporary historians who describe Francoism as totalitarian usually limit such descriprion to the early ten to twenty years of the "First Francoism". Stephen J. Lee limits the totalitarian phase of Francoism to the years 1939-1949, which he describes as "functionally - but not ideologically - totalitarian", and calls Franco "the closest of authoritarian dictators" "to being totalitarian."{{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Stephen J. |title=European Dictatorships 1918-1945 |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-29422-1}}{{pn|date=February 2025}} Julián Sanz Hoya refutes Linz's model of "limited pluralism" as "lame" and "practically inherent to all political systems" and writes that "considering the totalitarian vocation, it is more than evident that Franco's regime in the first twenty years had totalizing pretensions in relation to social control (including private life, morality and customs), the monopoly of politics and public space, and even the control of the economy (think of the strong interventionism of autarky)".{{cite book |last1=Hoya |first1=Julián Sanz |title=La construcción de la dictadura franquista en Cantabria |date=2020 |publisher=Ed. Universidad de Cantabria |isbn=978-84-8102-695-5}}{{pn|date=February 2025}}

Among the arguments introduced by Linz was the reliance of the Franco regime on Catholicism: "The heteronomous control of the ideological content of Catholic thought by a universal church and specifically by the Pope is one of the most serious obstacles to the creation of a truly totalitarian system by nondemocratic rulers claiming to implement Catholic social doctrine in their states.{{cite book |last1=Linz |first1=Juan José |title=Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes |date=2000 |publisher=Lynne Rienner Publishers |isbn=978-1-55587-890-0}}{{pn|date=February 2025}} This argument is also debated: "The frequent and saturated references to Francoist Catholic humanism, to the primordial sense of human dignity or to the centrality of the person, all coming from Christian theology, could hardly conceal the fact that the individual was only understood as a citizen to the extent of his adherence to the Catholic, hierarchical and economically privatist community that the military uprising had saved";{{Cite web |title=EL DERECHO PENAL BAJO LA DICTADURA FRANQUISTA Bases ideológicas y protagonistas |url=https://ruja.ujaen.es/jspui/bitstream/10953/1800/1/978-84-1122-139-9.pdf |website=ruja.ujaen.es}} "Catholic values that permeated the conservative ideological substratum... were precisely what was wielded by the Francoist Spanish political doctrine of the late thirties and early forties to justify the need for the constitution of a totalitarian State at the service and expansion of the Catholic religion."{{cite journal |last1=González Prieto |first1=Luis Aurelio |title=La voluntad totalitaria del Franquismo |journal=Revista del Posgrado en Derecho de la UNAM |date=28 June 2021 |issue=14 |pages=44 |doi=10.22201/ppd.26831783e.2021.14.170 |doi-access=free}}

{{main|Kokkashugi|Empire of Japan}}

{{stub section|date=April 2025}}

Totalitarianism has been one of the suggested descriptions for the one-party "statist" system which ruled Japan during World War II.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uc2EAgAAQBAJ | isbn=978-1-134-71418-6 | title=Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered | date=7 February 2002 | publisher=Routledge}} S. J. Lee believes that the ideological base "was traditional", as opposed to "revolutionary" ideologies required by the Western theories of totalitarianim, "even if the methods of communication and control were modern and European," and that the traditional society of Japan was "to a large degree differential", while its institutions remained too elitist and conservative to follow such practices as a "democratic mass mobilization" characteristic of totalitarianism, so he defines this system as authoritarian as opposed to totalitarian.Stephen J. Lee. European Dictatorships 1918-1945. 4th edition, 2016. pp. 364-365."

Michael Lucken calls Japan "the highly peculiar form of totalitarianism." However, according to him, "scholars today are hesitant to describe the regime as totalitarian": "only a handful of scholars specializing in Japan continue somewhat disparately to use the term, while others reject it entirely." He connects it to the policies of the U. S. during the occupation of Japan after World War II: while the American authorities labelled Germany "totalitarian", thus authorizing the term, they never officially did it to Japan, since this would make Hirohito responsible for the war and war crimes, what contradicted the plans of Douglas MacArthur; Hannah Arendt further contributed to the exclusion of Japan from the list of totalitarian regimes by formulating the mainstream criterion of totalitarianism unapplicable to Japan. However, her theories gained less influence, so the Japanese historians find the term applicable, what creates a discrepancy between Japanese and Western historiographies. According to Lucken, "The concept of totality in Japanese wartime thinking did not refer to an enclosed whole, like a set of marbles in a bag. On the contrary, it was an open and organic whole that resists any narrow definition. Consequently, if we are able to speak of Japanese totalitarianism, it was all the more total for having consistently resisted such a label."{{cite book|last1=Lucken |first1=Michael |title=The Japanese and the War: Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-231-54398-9 |location=Columbia University}}.

After rising to power in the 1968 election to become first president of Equatorial Guinea, president Francisco Macias Nguema held a plebiscite in 1973, reported as 99% in favour to support the abolition of the 1968 constitution and replacing it with a new one. Under the 1973 constitution, the United National Workers' Party (PUNT) became the sole legal political party. Following this, full membership of the party was mandatory for acceptance to academic institutions or for work contracts, as well as the party card becoming as important to everyday life as the national identity card.{{cite book|last=Otabela|first=Joseph-Désiré|title=Entre Estética Y Compromiso. la Obra de Donato Ndongo-bidyogo|year=2009|publisher=Editorial UNED |language=es|isbn=9788436258257|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W8wxxvF30GQC&q=juventudes+en+marcha+con+macias|access-date=4 November 2018}}{{better source|date=June 2025}}

Macias's control over the economy became absolute, private enterprise was suppressed,{{cite news |access-date=14 March 2017 |work=Diario ABC |date=30 October 1976 |title=Millones y corrupción a 'go-go' |lang=es |url=https://www.abc.es/archivo/periodicos/blanco-negro-19761030-21.html |archive-date=4 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181104125848/http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/blanco.y.negro/1976/10/30/021.html |url-status= live}} foreign currencies were destroyed and the entire state treasury was transferred to Macias' personal estate, resulting in the majority of the population reverting to a barter system. To combat low cocoa outputs from worker shortages, 20,000 Equatoguineans were forced into slavery.{{cite magazine |title=Equatorial Guinea: Despot's Fall |magazine=Time |date=August 20, 1979 |access-date=2025-06-23 |url=https://time.com/archive/6880455/equatorial-guinea-despots-fall/ }}

Over the course of his twelve year rule in Equatorial Guinea, Macias instated a system in which absolute power was concentrated in his hands, seeing mass executions, brutal suppression of political dissenters, ethnic minorities and non-government institutions which posed a threat to his government such as businesses, foreign aid organisations and eventually churches, combined with an all consuming cult of personality to further maintain this control. The violent, illogical extremism of Macias has resulted in his comparison to Pol Pot of Cambodia, with the revival of slavery and efforts to prevent escape from the country giving the country the nickname of the 'Dachau of Africa.'{{cite book |last=Kenyon |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Kenyon |year=2018 |title=Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa |chapter=Equitorial Guinea |pages=259–298 |location=London |publisher=Head of Zeus |url=https://archive.org/details/dictatorlandmenw0000keny }}

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Totalitarian

Totalitarian regimes