Totalitarian Character Research Articles

Grupul Etnic German din România și Serviciul Special de Informaţii (1940-1944)

One can safely state that the «Andreas Schmidt era» (1940-1944) could be considered one of the most difficult periods of the history of the German minority in Romania. From the very beginning, the activity of Nazi controlled organization entitled the German Ethnic Group in Romania and its leader (Andreas Schmidt) was perceived by the Romanian authorities with suspicion and concern. This concern was legitimate since the aggressive policies of the leadership of the German Ethnic Group in Romania let to increasing tensions between the latter, on one side, and the Romanian authorities and the Romanian local population in mixed Romanian-German communities, on the other side. Consequently, the Special Intelligence Service (Serviciul Special de Informaţii, one of the Romanian secret services in the interwar period), the intelligence service of the Romanian army (entitled in Romanian: Secţia a II-a Informaţii a Marelui Stat Major), the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie, and the General Directorate of the Police kept under close surveillance the hostile activities of the German Ethnic Group towards the Romanian state. The reports of these aforementioned intelligence institutions emphasized the totalitarian character of the German Ethnic Group in Romania and illustrates how this Nazi controlled organization turned under the leadership of Andreas Schmidt into an effective tool of the Third Reich in South Eastern Europe.

Soviet criminal-executing system as a tool of totalitarianism

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to reveal the legal foundations of the formation of the Soviet criminal-executive system and its qualification as a tool of totalitarianism. Methods. The article uses a set of principles and methods of scientific knowledge, in particular the principles of objectivity and historicism, as well as methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization, legal, formal-legal, system-historical, retrospective analysis, dialectical, phenomenological, hermeneutic and systemic. A theoretical analysis of the concepts of «totalitarianism» and «criminal-executive system» was carried out, approaches to understanding their content among Ukrainian and foreign scientists were considered. Results. The author's understanding of the concept of the criminal-executive system was formed as a set of authorities that were responsible for the execution of criminal punishments and probation and implemented not only an educational and correctional function, but they were a tool of the political regime in the fight against internal opposition. The Soviet criminal-executive system was directly involved in the implementation of the so-called «great terror», and until the 1960s it had a distinct correctional and labor character. Confirmation of the totalitarian character of the criminal-executive system of the Soviet era are the very norms of law that regulated its formation and development. Thus, the ideologues of Bolshevism immediately pointed out the punitive nature of criminal legislation. In the 1930s, in the context of the adoption of emergency legislation and, in particular, the adoption of a number of amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes, the Correctional Labor Code of 1925 lost legal force, and correctional legislation was regulated by the norms of emergency law. The system of execution of punishments was finally regulated only with the adoption of the Correctional and Labor Code of the Ukrainian SSR in 1970. The latter approved a harsh, inhumane system, which focused its attention on the complete exploitation of persons serving sentences. A conclusion has been made about the perspective of studying the Soviet criminal-executive system, in particular in terms of fixing numerous crimes against persons who were serving sentences, rehabilitation of victims of totalitarianism, as well as improvement of the current legislation of Ukraine. Originality. The regularities of the formation and evolution of the criminal-executive system of the Ukrainian SSR have been established, and the signs that allow it to be qualified as totalitarian have been determined. Practical significance. The results of the research can be used in the process of historical and legal research, preparation of special courses.

Northern Lights Are Our Friends: Soviet Deportations and Siberian Nature in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Although their history dates back to the sixteenth century and the policies of Tsarist Russia, Siberian exiles—in the cultural memory of central and eastern Europe—are usually associated with the Gulag and the policies of Lenin and Stalin during the revolution, collectivization, the Great Terror, and the Second World War. As a result of the mass repressions, millions of adults and children of various nationalities, including Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Russians, were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union—Siberia, the Ural Mountains, and Kazakhstan. The article examines children's and young adult books about these deportations that not only showcase the totalitarian character of Stalinism but also contrast human brutality with the goodness and innocence of nature surrounding the child protagonists transported deep into the USSR. Thus, the novels' chronotope seems to convey the testimony of traumatic events in the history of post-Soviet nations and provide young readers with a sense of hope epitomized by the vastness of the snows of Siberia.

Dioecismo y Ciudad Ideal. Acerca de la República de Platón, VII 540e4-541a1

The radical mean suggested by Socrates in order to carry out the program of the Republic - the relegation to the fields of all inhabitants over the age of 10 - has perplexed modern commentators who have seen in it an ironical remark, a reductio ad absurdum presented in order to establish the very impossibility of Kallipolis or, on the contrary, a sign of the totalitarian and criminal character of the Platonic city. But it is far from evident, in view of political or military events prior and contemporary with the redaction of the Republic, that this solution could offend the moral conscience of fourth-century Greeks. This practice even seems to be the logical consequence of a certain oligarchic or aristocratic ideology, common by the end of the 5th c. and at the beginning of the 4th c., which associated, on the one hand, rural organization with the ‘best regime’ and, on the other, urban centralisation with democracy. The actual practices of the Lacedaemonian city, which maintained its primitive organization in komai, and even tried to impose it to other cities, could also serve as a model for the opponents of Athenian democracy. All of Plato's political models, from the Republic to the Laws, present cities whose essential, if not exclusive, productive activity is agriculture. The displacement of the population to the countryside seems, from this perspective, a rather serious proposal of the philosopher. * * Agradezco a Héctor Zagal y a María-Elena García-Peláez por sus observaciones y sugerencias al texto en español.

Widziana z III RP prawnopolityczna tożsamość Polski Ludowej

The Polish People’s Republic is a matter of the past, but not entirely. Finally, nolens volens, the current version of our old statehood is its continuation, manifested in numerous formal solutions. This is in an evident manner a republican form of statehood and a democratic system. Similar to the Stalinist Constitution of 1952, it was called a people’s democracy, but from 1976 a socialist democracy as the effect of changes in the written Ius Supremum. In the political practice, after partial totalitarianism came authoritarianism. Before 1980, there were no changes in the institutional state power system. Theoretically, the first in this structure was the Sejm — the official emanation of the Volonté Générale. The collective head of the state was the State Council with a more republican identity than the contemporary president. The Council of Ministers actually has the same shape as before 1989, as well as the parliamentary cabinet system of government. In similar situation are: the Supreme Court, the Administrative Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Tribunal, the Ombudsman, and the Supreme Chamber of Control. Their identity and philosophy of action are similar to the socio-political reality from before the system transformation, mythologized in many aspects.
 This does not mean that it is fiction. Its result, according to the ancient nomenclature, was the transformation of socialist democracy into bourgeois people’s rule. Actually, we rather talk about the transition from “communism” or totalitarianism to liberal democracy. But Marxist-Leninist classics claimed that communism will be a post-state society without class opposites. Finally, in the Polish People’s Republic real socialism existed, with partial totalitarian character, replaced shortly after Stalin’s death by authoritarianism, which in the socio-economic and cultural spheres tolerates spontaneous manifestations of activity, without inspirations of the authorities, its culmination being in the time of the several-month-long “Carnival of Solidarity”. The Gdańsk Agreement we can understand as a social agreement, later transformed into the Round Table Agreements. After the continuation of these events it is possible to find on the constitutional ground in 1989, and then in 1997, when the new, formalized and complete Highest Law was created, as a formal recapitulation of political transformation.
 So we observe the mild transition of the Polish People’s Republic into the Third Polish Republic. The first one does not exist in the text of the actual Constitution, but it is impossible to not see a certain continuity. In the situation of the important difference between the two forms of our statehood — old and new — probably in the case of a system transformation there significant revolutionary accidents would have been unavoidable, but they have not happened. Parliamentary democracy was liberalized, which manifested in in the replacement of Gierek’s famous slogan of moral and political unity with the conviction that an official electoral struggle for power between parties is necessary. The second important change in the political sphere is the greater consideration of Montesquieu’s dogma concerning the division of state power. Other changes are less significant. Also, the republican democracy has maintained its fundamental identity, although the system of institutionalized rule had changed.

REFLEKSJE O NARRACJI DONBASKIEJ W KULTURZE I LITERATURZE UKRAIŃSKIEJ Z PERSPEKTYWY XXI WIEKU

The article is devoted to political, cultural and mental diversity of Donbass from the rest of Ukraine. The author shows the uniqueness of this region as a result of a complex and contradictory history, as well as the effect of permanent social, economic and ethnocultural processes of a colonial and totalitarian character. This is the reason for the hybrid identity of local residents. Later on, more space is devoted to the work of two writers — Ukrainian-speaking Serhiy Zhadan and Ukrainian-Russian-speaking Vladimir Rafeenko.

Finding the Enemy: Ethnicized State Violence and Population Control in Ceaușescu's Romania

State violence as a complex system of ideological prescriptions, normative values, and everyday practices has been emerging as a major topic in the study of Soviet-type regimes. Overcoming the Cold War preoccupation with the totalitarian character of these societies, new historiographical approaches put at the center the changing degree of physical and psychological violence. This article sketches the evolution of state violence concepts and practices in Communist-era Romania, focusing on the treatment of the large Hungarian minority in Transylvania. Although Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania has been largely acknowledged as a special case, incompatible with the overall development of the Soviet bloc, it is possible to apply the model of “civilized violence” and “reliability of expectations” to the specific conditions of the late phase of Romanian national Communism. The most primitive forms of physical violence such as shooting or the savage beating of inmates never disappeared from the power instruments available to the different repressive bodies, but these techniques were supplemented by more refined attempts to encourage social collaboration based on patriotic conviction.

Retroaktywna „defaszyzacja faszyzmu” w interpretacji Emilio Gentilego

RETROACTIVE “TRIVIALIZATION OF FASCISM” ACCORDING TO EMILIO GENTILE’S CONCEPT The text is devoted to the concept of “retroactive trivialization of fascism” developed at the be­ginning of the 21st century by an Italian historian — Emilio Gentile. According to Gentile, the pheno­menon of “banalization of fascism”, inaugurated in the postwar years in neo-fascist memorialism and continued by some of the contemporary historians, consists in: 1 negation of totalitarian character of Italian fascism and presenting it as an authoritarian dictatorship of traditionalistic type; 2 challenging the existence of “positive” fascist ideology, and in 3 characterizing Mussolini’s regime as a perso­nal “duce” dictatorship created on the basis of traditional elites. In the Gentile’s concept, fascism constituted “an Italian road to totalitarianism”, was atotalitarian experiment having its own positive ideology and forming ademonstration of new, revolutionary, and totalitarian nationalism.

Subjetividade na Renovação Carismática Católica: Mecanismos de Funcionamento e de sua Produção

Resumo Este texto trata de discorrer sobre uma pesquisa acerca da Renovação Carismática Católica (RCC) a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica e de análise documental, desenvolvendo uma Análise Institucional (AI) “no papel” e tendo como pilar teórico, trabalhos institucionalistas desenvolvidos no campo da Psicologia social sobre o tema dos movimentos religiosos no contexto da Igreja Católica. A RCC é um movimento religioso que surgiu nos Estados Unidos da América em 1967 e se expandiu amplamente, marcando forte presença no Brasil. O principal foco deste artigo foram os mecanismos de produção de subjetividade que esse movimento emprega: pensamos seus efeitos em termos de saber/poder sobre a vida de seus participantes e percebemos que existe um padrão normalizador veiculado por seu discurso oficial, que é intensamente difundido por meio da televisão, da Internet, de livros e eventos que envolvem grandes multidões, difundindo e promovendo uma subjetividade serializada. Além disso, entendemos que seus mecanismos de ação se aproximam dos movimentos de caráter totalitário.

SUBJECTIVITY UNDER CONSUMERISM: THE TOTALIZATION OF THE SUBJECT AS A COMMODITY

Abstract This theoretical work discusses consumerism's processes of subjectivation and their psychological consequences. Its regime is studied through its social imaginary and its totalitarian character: the discourse of advertising, as a global hegemon, absorbs all forms of discourse and signification, thereby actualizing capitalism's telos - the colonization of the Lebenswelt under a great imperative: everything must become a commodity, especially the subject. A process of totalization of subjectivity occurs under a commodification logic centered on the representation: every image must be transformed into commodity-signs. Thus the consumption imaginary appears as a totalizing ideology, functioning as archaic représentations collectives (Durkheim) and simulating a religious imaginary. It mass-produces subjectivity through participation mystique (Lévy-Bruhl) with its commodity-signs (and their fetish) and the whole imaginary. Its subject is defined as a bricolage of consumable commodity-signs, being therefore eternally fluid, performative, and ethereal. Thus it produces an anthropological mutation, the commodity-subject: a disposable, empty, thoroughly commodified self.

Czy doktryna Dwóch Ciał Króla jest zaprzeczeniem demokracji ?

Does the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies contradict democracy? The King’s Two Bodies in the Carnival of Democracy In my paper, I will try to show that the medieval doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies could have been a significant support for the Carnival of Democracy as described by L. Koczanowicz in his Politics of Dialogue. I critically refer to the author’s thesis that the doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies has a totalitarian character. I do this, however, on the very same grounds that Koczanowicz uses to develop his vision of non‑consensual democracy – one that is built on emotions, empathy and customs. In my view, the doctrine of King’s Two Bodies not only does not contradict this vision but supports it. It does so by conceptualization of the idea of power as an empty space (C. Lefort) and thus enables the development of numerous (proto)democratic practices in politics and law. These practices take shape of ceremonies of humiliating those in power – so important for Koczanowicz in his vision of Democratic Carnival. As an example of these practices I will refer to the annual ceremony of the State Opening of the UK Parliament, as well as other institutions that were developed in England/UK – as guarantees of the democratic rule of law – and were possible thanks to the idea of the King’s Two Bodies.

El Partido Unión Revolucionaria y su proyecto totalitario - Fascista. Perú 1933 - 1936

Este estudio presenta las características centrales de un Partido fascista en el Perú, su organización, ideología y significado político en América Latina en la década de los 30 del siglo XX. Examina y analiza al Partido Unión Revolucionaria y el proceso de formación del populismo conservador y carismático de un movimiento político liderado por Luis M. Sánchez Cerro: un militar cuyo gobierno dictatorial desbordó lo que se podría tipificar como «bonapartismo», en cuanto el especial carácter autoritario-populista que implicó. Bajo este panorama presentaremos las pistas históricas esenciales del periplo fascista de aquel partido, sus complejas relaciones con el poder, sus ejes ideológicos y corporativistas, su xenofobia frente a la inmigración asiática, su organización, en especial de sus camisas negras, y el carácter totalitario de su proyecto político entre 1933 y 1936.

Different treatment of hate speech in the process of communication in Europe and the U.S.

The question how to treat the hate speech in the communication process is complex and there is no easy answer. Two existing models, American and European, are entirely different towards hate speech and its positioning in the room that belongs on the freedom of expression. In the American legal system, hate speech is an integral part of freedom of expression, while in Europe it is an abuse of the basic human rights for free speech. Hence, in these two approaches permanently is present the issue: is there any limit in democracy for freedom of expression and if so, where to draw the line. The dilemmas are not easy to solve and there is no universal answer: sometimes and the best intentions to prevent the spread of hatred in the communication processes could be easily stray into a ban with totalitarian character of a different opinion and criticism; On the other hand, and excessive openness for different views and perspectives in society could be deformed in the abuse of the right for free speech and losing of sense of responsibly for publicly spoken speech and harming of another one. Unfortunately, the state does not have a universal 'instrument' that would show whether something is freedom of expression or its misuse. This is a question that American and European legislation are attempting to answer for a while, however without definite conclusion and universally acceptable solution.

Beginning in the Middle: Deleuze, Glissant, and Colonial Difference

This essay reads Rosi Braidotti's philosophical nomadism from a decolonial perspective with the goal of uncovering the irreducible colonial difference which underlies the Eurocentric ontological vision embedded in Braidotti's reading of Gilles Deleuze. In particular, I read Edouard Glissant in tandem with Deleuze through the notion of the ‘middle’, a key concept which grounds the three thinkers' ontology of multiplicity. To this end, I borrow Nelson Maldonado-Torres' Fanonian critique of Eurocentric ontology and show how Braidotti fails to escape from the trap of Eurocentrism due to her inability to capture the abyssal and totalitarian character of coloniality imprinted in the cry of the damné. Against Braidotti's simplistic misreading of Glissant as a future-oriented constructivist, I argue that the enigmatic trope of Relation in Glissant opens up at the middle space of groundlessness constituting the ontological edifice of the colonial subject: revealing the abyssal middle in which the ineffable experience of shared suffering never stops haunting the freeing knowledge of relation.

Las tensiones político-eclesiásticas en torno a Fermín Yzurdiaga, 1936-1939

Fermin Yzurdiaga was a priest from Navarra who carried out an extremely visible political and propaganda activity for Falange, during the Spanish Civil War. Having been born in Pamplona, he carried out some pioneering cultural projects in Franco's Spain: the Arriba Espana newspaper and a magazine called Jerarquia . Besides, in May 1937, Franco appointed him as Falange’s Press and Propaganda chief. As a clergyman, Yzurdiaga aspired to reconcile Catholicism and Falange. However, due to his constant political visibility, his speeches and sermons, his frequent controversies with many catholics, and the uncertainty about the increasingly totalitarian character of the State that Yzurdiaba was working for, he was seen by his Church superiors with increasing suspicion. The Bishop of Pamplona, Marcelino Olaechea, required him to resign both from his political activity at the end of 1937, and from his journalistic role in late 1938. Our goal is to analyze the early clashes between civil and religious authorities to control the direction of the priest’s initiatives.

North Korea: Fading Totalitarianism in the 'Hermit Kingdom'

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new conditions. This paper examines how the countrys totalitarian character has been upheld through the institutional changes instigated by the economic collapse and subsequent famine in the country. It strives to answer whether todays North Korea should still be characterized as a totalitarian society, and, if not, what system then governs the country.

North Korea: Fading Totalitarianism in the "Hermit Kingdom"

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new conditions. This paper examines how the country’s totalitarian character has been upheld through the institutional changes instigated by the economic collapse and subsequent famine in the country. It strives to answer whether today’s North Korea should still be characterized as a totalitarian society, and, if not, what system then governs the country.

China the Anomaly

During the autumn of 1949, Hannah Arendt completed the manuscript of The Origins of Totalitarianism. On 1 October of the same year, the People’s Republic of China was founded under the leadership of Mao Zedong. This article documents Arendt’s claim in 1949 that the prospects of totalitarianism in China were ‘frighteningly good’, and yet her ambivalent judgment, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, about the totalitarian character of the Maoist regime. Despite being the premier theorist of totalitarian formations, Arendt’s interest in China was half-hearted and her analysis often wildly inaccurate. The concern of this paper, however, is less with the veracity of her remarks, than with a counterfactual question. If Arendt had known what we know now, would she have considered Maoist China to be a totalitarian regime? Put another way: to what extent is our modern picture of Mao’s regime consistent with Arendt’s depiction of the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler? While Arendt got many of her facts wrong, her theory of totalitarianism — as shapeless, febrile, voracious of human flesh, and endlessly turbulent — was in good measure applicable to Mao’s regime, even though she failed to recognize it.

Nationalist Allegory in North Korea: The Revolutionary Opera Sea of Blood

IntroductionBased on the 1969 film of the same name, adapted by the Phibada Opera Troupe under the supervision of Kim Jong Il, and performed over 1,500 times since its premier at the Pyongyang Grand Theater in July 1971, of Blood stands as the foremost Stalinist in North Korea. The fountainhead of the socialist realist Sea of Blood-style opera, it is also the first of the five revolutionary operas. of Blood contains a relatively uncomplicated plot: a beleaguered Korean peasant mother in colonial-era Manchuria loses her husband and youngest son to the Japanese Imperial Army and subsequently joins the national-liberation guerrilla struggle of Kim Il Sung. Although the work supposedly delineates the ideological and moral transformation from passive victim to politically committed hero, of Blood is a homiletic nationalist allegory whose officially designated truthfulness is betrayed by a crude symbolic mode that departs from everyday life. Profound sociological and aesthetic incongruities make the production artistically false and misleading. The mythopoeic representations and nationalist allegory of the North Korean opera render it antithetical to the objective characteristics of a realistic literature.Nationalist AllegoryWhat is nationalist allegory? It is an orthodox Marxist term, derived from Leon Trotsky's 1923 classic Literature and Revolution, which defines an anti-realist pseudoart that is essentially religious and/or moralistic and characterized by an irrational reactionary fixation with the archaic nation-state system. The most indubitable feature of this conservative, idealist symbolic mode is that it not only fixates on, but apotheosizes the bourgeois state, placing it above time, space, and society in one way or another. Nationalist allegories may be of an ultra-relativist or populist or totalitarian character. Whatever fetishistic incarnation it assumes, the allegorized nation state and its representative forms and figures function as false ideological abstractions for the activities of certain (possibly, but not necessarily, marginalized) social groups, imagined communities, or racial populations. The nation state is turned into a mystical symbol in the narrative text and becomes a god or an idol into which is projected a lost sense of wholeness, a lost sense of being in the world. Consequently, the literary demography therein is torn away from life and ceases to be truly social in its human essence, that is, truly international. The aesthetic character of nationalist based ultimately in social inequality and alienation, is pathogenic and signifies an ailing or repressed artistic consciousness. In this deepgoing spiritual crisis, the truthful objective element and value of art is, if not altogether absent, compromised by the subjectivism and ideology of the producer of nationalist allegory. The nationalist allegorist, who is essentially a opportunist with a talent for the pen or brush, ignores the objective lessons of history, religiously invests in a moribund nineteenth-century political system, and attempts to stir deep emotional forces and reactions in the reader or audience in order to valorize an eternal identity and separatism.The content of nationalist allegory is unlike that of American critical theorist Fredric Jameson's well-known and disputatious concept of national allegory, which is basically a symbolic commentary or diagnostic critique of the nation in thirdworld literatures (Jameson, 1986). Nationalist allegory is a symbolic infatuation, defense, and mystification of the decaying nation-state form in the epoch of imperialism, that is, the epoch of world economy and the domination of finance capital. But if it is backwards and retrogressive, how can nationalist allegory genuinely entice the writer or reader, as it has done in and outside North Korea? Does this suggest something inherently appealing about allegoricity, about the aesthetic predominance of the allegorical at the expense of the real? …

The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia (review)

Reviewed by John Connelly Dept. of History University of California, Berkeley 3229 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2550 USA jfconnel@berkeley.edu Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia. 848 pp. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. ISBN 0393020304. $35.00 (cloth). 849 pp. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. ISBN 0393327973. $21.95 (paper). Hitlerism and Stalinism are "comparable" in the banal way that all things can be put next to one another and studied. The question is what we can learn by comparing the two dictatorships. Richard Overy does not explicitly respond to this question but rather names "two purposes" for his massive study: "to supply an empirical foundation on which to construct any discussion of what made the two systems either similar or different" and "to write a comparative 'operational' history of the two systems in order to answer the large historical question about how personal dictatorship actually worked" (xxxiii–xxxiv). 1 This would seem a shallow conceptual foundation for over 800 pages of text. Overy is not concerned. Nor does he engage debates on the totalitarian character of the two regimes, on whether they were variants of "modernity," or on whether they constituted "political religions." 2 Instead, Overy groups his analysis around what Robert Merton might have called "social mechanisms": [End Page 919] building blocks of sociological theory of the middle range, below general laws but above simple description. 3 His chapters are about the economies, cultural revolutions, party-states, terror machines, moral discourses, camp systems, cults of personality, roots of popular support, and militaries. In his view, the two regimes must stand together in historical analysis because in their time they stood "apart from anything else" (645)—above all in their human costs. 4 Those costs resulted not from intent to destroy but rather from intent to create: ideal worlds. Overy portrays the dictators as restlessly active in making their utopias; in neither place was "the future ideal ever relegated to the status of mythology" (262). But mythology was not entirely absent, for "both dictatorships were predicated on the myth of perfectibility" (261). If there was a core commonality to the two regimes it was their scientism: neither Hitler nor Stalin doubted science's power to capture reality and then to change it. The difference was in the science they enlisted. The Nazi utopia was biological and committed the regime to developing "a pure racial body capable of reproduction along narrowly defined demographic lines. Individual worth and well-being were measured in terms of biological usefulness and race value, above all the willingness to accept the sacrifice of the self for the survival of the species." The Soviet leading science was sociological, set on creating "a progressive society based around the satisfaction of human needs" (264). If Stalin was inspired by Lamarck in his belief that environment might reshape human nature, the Nazis were disciples of Darwin and sought to remold genetic inheritance through breeding. For them, the "new man was born rather than made" (245). This ideological distinction suggests deeper differences between the regimes, a point Overy appears to grant when he writes that the competing "social utopias were profoundly different in purpose": the Nazis promoted race as an absolute value while the Soviets esteemed the "practical hard-working and politically acceptable proletarian" (241). Later in the book he even writes [End Page 920] that the two regimes constituted "distinct species" because of their lack of "common ground … on issues of race and nation" (590). Yet for most of the work this apparently clear distinction fades into an inexplicable vagueness. For example (and most egregiously) in a chapter entitled "Nations and Races" Overy speaks of the "complex and ambiguous nature of the issues of race and nation under Stalin and Hitler" and alleges that the "definition of nation, race, and state was a central political question in both dictatorships. National and racial issues spawned much of the excessive violence...