The Advent of Totalitarianism: A Jump past the Kingdom of Freedom (2009)

The historical prerequisites and the making of the totalitarian-bureaucratic system in Europe at the close of XIX and in the forepart of XX centuries are scrutinized. A special attention is paid to the forms which it had acquired in Russia where the monopolistic capitalism had burst into the feudal-patriarchal silence of civil society. It is traced how the antimonarchist revolution under the flag of emancipation had brought to a totalitarian absolutism without private interests which are capable, at least partly, of mitigating the pitiless pressure of state and giving personality a bit of free expression. The author reveals the insuperable flaws of the totalitarian bureaucratic model of rule (coming, in particular, from Weber) and demonstrates its inefficiency in solving elementary problems of social life.

Keywords: totalitarianism, state, bureaucratic rule, freedom, civil society, self-expression.