Talk:Stalinism

Word totalitarianism has been deleted from the list. Even extreme hardcore anti-Stalinists can be totalitarian like Hitler and Mussolini. —This unsigned comment was added by 219.64.79.70 (talk • contribs).

True, but if I were to pejoratively describe a government (any government) as operating under Stalinism, it would be understood that I was refering to totalitarianism. bd2412 T 07:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

As described in the Wikipedia article, w:Stalinism is sometimes described as being synonymous with totalitarianism. —Stephen 15:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Wrong description about Stalinism

Anti-revisionists in Marxist-Leninist movement explicitly claim themselves as Stalinists but they don't agree that they are totalitarians. Trotskyites describe Stalinists as totalitarian but we cannot compare Stalinism with totalitarianism in all cases because extreme hardcore anti-Stalinists like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco led totalitarian rule.

A dictionary is not about what philosophy or doctine is correct, but about how words are used. The article does not say that people who equate Stalinism and totalitarianism are right, it only says that that is how some people use and understand the words. Articles on doctrine, politics and philosophy belong on Wikipedia, not here. —Stephen 14:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Trotskyites and other anti-Stalinists think that Stalin was totalitarian but that is not the opinion of all people. What is the need of using the word totalitarianism here? Isn't it bias defending Trotskyism or other form of anti-Stalinism?

We don’t care who uses the word, it is simply that the word is so used by some people. A dictionary entry does not defend or promulgate any discipline, it only explains what some people mean when they use the word, rightly or wrongly. Only an encyclopedic entry will attempt to defend a concept, and we are not an encyclopedia. —Stephen 15:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Even the word secularism has different meanings. Atheists think that they are real secularists and there are also open religious people who claim themselves as secularists but dictionaries write only single meaning of secularism. I read different dictionaries. In all of those dictionaries, they wrote that secularism means life or philosophy that does not pertain to any religion. Same case be applied to Stalinism and meaning used by Trotskyites and other anti-Stalinists need not be added here.

Different words have different meanings. If people assign a certain meaning to a word, it belongs here. If a meaning is missing from one word, it does not mean that a meaning should be removed from another. It only means that the missing meaning should be added to the word that doesn’t have it. —Stephen 15:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The discussion of Stalinism as totalitarianism originated from Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. And yet even Arendt used the term totalitarianism as a description! Totalitarianism is useful as a MODEL, but it is inaccurate to explicitly refer to Stalinism as totalitarianism. They are not the same thing - as Ian Kershaw explained, each regime, in particular the Nazi and Soviet regimes, which have both been labelled totalitarian, are unique: 'sui generis' and must be considered as Nazism/Stalinism, not as totalitarianism. The model of totalitarianism doesn't explain Nazi/Stalinist society or offer predictability. It is not a purposeful historical device an is useful only as a description (and in fact is used for social science modelling). It is an oversimplification of Stalinism but is useful superficially as a descriptive device - yet even then, only as a starting point in the exploration of Stalinism.

RFV discussion: August–December 2016

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Stalinism

Rfv-sense: Totalitarianism, by extension from the rigid governing methods of Stalin.

I checked a couple of dictionaries and they do not have this sense. Are there attesting quotations meeting WT:ATTEST? For this sense to be attested, the use would have to be synonymous with, not hyponymous to, totalitarianism; thus, any species of totalitarianism would have to be a species of Stalinism in this sense. Sense added in diff. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:42, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

For what its worth, a long time ago I read writings by a historian named John Lukacs who has written about both Nazism and Communism and totalitarianism in general. He wrote that the term 'totalitarianism' was coined by a left-wing intellectual named Hannah Arendt as a way of describing Nazism in her book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism' and that she later added just one chapter about Stalinism as an after thought when Stalin's regime was found to be similar to Hitler' by the intellectual establishment. Lukacs viewed Arendt as a hack at best, a charlatan at worst. Totalitarianism, I believe, is a word mainly used by the intellectual establishment, not men on the street, and the intellectual establishment is still mostly dominated by the left. So, I would imagine that Nazism is much more often used as a synonym for all forms of totalitarianism than Stalinism, since the left are still the vast majority of the intellectual establishment and the left generally focus more on criticizing Nazism just like the right generally criticize Stalinism more, for ideological reasons. Given the left's still having a near monopoly on academia and the media, I would be surprised if forms of leftist ideas such as Stalinism are often used to mean all forms of totalitarianism. More importantly, I've also tried doing google searches and found no evidence Stalinism is used that way. [1] [2] I saw some results suggesting it was hyponomous to totalitarianism but none that it was a synonym. I'm not seeing any results supporting it as a syonym on google books either, [3] RandomScholar30 (talk) 03:14, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I looked up on google books what Lukacs said about the term's origins in relation to Arendt. He wrote in 'The Hitler of History': 'An influential example of the employment of the term is Hannah Arendt's 'The Origin of Totalitarianism', published in 1951, which had a considerable impact on intellectuals, especially in New York, many of whom were for the first time (and belatedly) willing to recognize the totalitarian features of Stalin's dictatorship. This flawed and dishonest book had been composed by the author in the 1940s, and originally referred only to the origins and practices of Nazism...After 1948...Arendt thought it politic to add two, extremely chapters expounding the totalitarian features of Stalinism.'These were illustrations from no more than two books' That is in Lukacs 'The Hitler of History' in a footnote on pages 113-114 [4]. That shows the term totalitarianism was coined to mostly refer to Nazism. Given that, and that people of Hannah Arendt's political views still dominate the intellectual establishment, which are most of the people who even use the word 'totalitarianism' I doubt Stalinism would be used as a synonym for totalitarianism, I think more people would use Nazism that way. RandomScholar30 (talk) 03:49, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I also found a more relevant quote from Lukacs supporting what I'm saying. Lukacs wrote in 'Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred': 'For many kinds of ideological and personal reasons many people did not apply it to Soviet Russia and Communism (selective indignation being a main component of political preferences and of ideological thinking). Again, we ought to recognize a principle shortcoming of the liberal vision of political history, inherent in the minds of many thinkers and writers, for whom totalitarianism and particularly its 'extreme rightist' versions are reactionary.' [5] Unfortunately this google books preview does not have page numbers, but it supports what I'm saying that Nazism would be more likely to be used as a synonym for totalitarianism than Stalinism. RandomScholar30 (talk) 05:13, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Since, so far, we have not been able to verify it, should we delete the definition of Stalinism as meaning totalitarianism in all of its forms? RandomScholar30 (talk) 22:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

We give RfVed items at least 30 days vs. a minimum of 7 for RfD items because citation can be difficult and may depend on the assistance of some muse (Mneme? Clio?), which assistance may not be promptly forthcoming. DCDuring TALK 23:54, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Clio thinks it's probably impossible to find specific cites for this sense. "Stalinist practices" seems to get some hits on Google that use the related adjective seemingly to just mean "totalitarian", though. (Clio would also like to note that trash talking Hannah Arendt just ain't right, and that she did not coin the term totalitarianism: it is first attested in reference to Italian fascism, in 1926.) — Kleio (t · c) 23:14, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

• RFV failed on the sense: no attesting quotations provided. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 4 December 2016 (UTC)