Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared

by Michael Geyer, Sheila Fitzpatrick

Overview

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of Stalinism and Nazism and establish a new methodology for viewing their histories that goes well beyond the now-outdated twentieth-century models of totalitarianism, ideology, and personality.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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521723978
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	552
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

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.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: beyond totalitarianism - Stalinism and Nazism compared Michael Geyer with Sheila Fitzpatrick; 2. The political (dis)orders of Stalinism and national socialism Yoram Gorlizki and Hans Mommsen; 3. Utopian biopolitics: reproductive policies, gender roles, and sexuality in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union David L. Hoffman and Annette F. Timm; 4. State violence - violent societies Christian Gerlach and Nicolas Werth; 5. The quest for order and the pursuit of terror: National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union as multi-ethnic empires Jorg Baberowski and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel; 6. Frameworks for social engineering: Stalinist schema of identification and the Nazi volksgemeinschaft Christopher Browning and Lewis Siegelbaum; 7. Energizing the everyday: on the breaking and making of social bonds in Nazism and Stalinism Shelia Fitzpatrick and Alf Ludtke; 8. The new man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck; 9. States of exception: the Nazi-Soviet War as a system of violence, 1939–45 Mark Edele and Michale Geyer; 10. Mutual perceptions and projections: Stalin's Russia in Nazi Germany: Nazi Germany in Stalin's Russia - Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union Katerina Clark and Karl Schloegel.

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher