Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared
Author(s): Michael Geyer (Editor), Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: December 8, 2008
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Print length: 552 pages
ISBN-10: 0521897963
ISBN-13: 9780521897969
Book Description
In essays written jointly by specialists on Soviet and German history, the contributors to this book rethink and rework the nature of Stalinism and Nazism and establish a new methodology for viewing their histories that goes well beyond the now-outdated twentieth-century models of totalitarianism, ideology, and personality. Doing the labor of comparison gives us the means to ascertain the historicity of the two extraordinary regimes and the wreckage they have left. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars of Europe are no longer burdened with the political baggage that constricted research and conditioned interpretation and have access to hitherto closed archives. The time is right for a fresh look at the two gigantic dictatorships of the twentieth century and for a return to the original intent of thought on totalitarian regimes – understanding the intertwined trajectories of socialism and nationalism in European and global history.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Beginning this work with an introduction that doubles as an impressive bibliographic essay, the editors undertake in a single volume an effort to transcend earlier comparative Nazi-Stalinist studies. Recommended.” -Choice
“This remarkable study, edited by Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, begins with a sophisticated and thought-provoking 37-page introduction followed by a book of nearly 500 pages.” German Studies Review, Arnold Krammer, Texas A&M University
“This volume showcases a breathtaking command of the scholarly literature on the interwar period, fascism, Stalinism, Nazism, and World War II…If this book, with its impressive erudition and substantive essays, does not bury the concept of totalitarianism, nothing will.” – Wendy Goldman, American Historical Review
“For anyone who wants to make an attempt to understand two of the most important, in unattractive regimes of the twentieth century, this is an ideal place to begin. All involved in this ambitious project are to be congratulated on a job well-done.” -Keith Neilson, Canadian Journal of History
Book Description
These essays rethink the nature of Stalinism and Nazism and establish a new methodology for viewing their histories.
About the Author
Michael Geyer has a PhD from the Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford. He taught at the University of Michigan and as visiting professor in Bochum and Leipzig. He is most recently the author (with Konrad Jarausch) of Shattered Past; of Reconstructing German History; and of a forthcoming book (with Michel Espagne and Matthias Middell) titled European History in an Interconnected World. He has published extensively on the German military, war, and genocide as well as on resistance, terror, and religion. His current work focuses on defeat, nationalism, and self-destruction. He has been a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Humboldt Forschungspreis.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History at the University of Chicago, is the author of many books on Soviet social, cultural, and political history, including The Russian Revolution, Stalin’s Peasants, Everyday Stalinism, and, most recently, Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (2005). With Robert Gellately, she edited Accusatory Practices. Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989. A past president of AAASS, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Australian Academy of the Humanities, as well as a regular contributor to the London Review of Books. Her current research topics include displaced persons in Europe after the Second World War. In 2008–9, she will be a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.
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