Word: revelation
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...TOTALITARIAN TEMPTATION by JEAN-FRANCOIS REVEL 311 pages. Doubleday...
...pattern has become classic: a nation emerges from the colonial yoke, lustily declares its independence-and then succumbs to the totalitarian mode. French Philosopher Jean-Francis Revel, author of Without Marx or Jesus, tries to analyze this alarming trend in a book filled with mordant wit and intensity. As a kind of historical prosecuting attorney, Revel puts Joseph Stalin in the dock, then offers witnesses to the crime of totalitarianism. It was the murderous Russian dictator who showed the 20th century how to construct a hermetically sealed tyranny, says Revel. It is the Stalinist model that is being sedulously imitated...
...When Revel's book was first published in France last year, many outraged intellectuals accused him of reviving the cold war. To Revel, a man of the non-Communist left, that accusation is a radical illusion; the war has never ceased. Stalinism, he insists, is no aberration, but the very essence of Communism. Without the kind of terror and oppression perfected in Moscow, every Communist government would collapse. Thus when any radical leftist regime comes to power, it suspends individual rights and forbids a genuine opposition...
Occasionally, Stalinism shows a sunnier face. But that is merely tactical, says Revel, because the frown is sure to follow. Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev is "simply a button-down Stalin without the old man's dementia." He has not emptied the Gulag of its millions of prisoners nor have any of the lesser Gulags in all the other Communist nations been dismantled. In fact, when Russia relaxes its grip on nations like Rumania and Albania, their societies tend to become even harsher and more restrictive. "De-Russification," writes Revel, "does not mean democratization...
...Revel's survey of Communist behavior persuades him that there is no such thing as Euro-Communism. It is just Stalinism decorated with new promises. As proof, Revel offers the damning evidence of the French and Italian Communist parties. If they mean what they say about permitting a democratic opposition when they come to power, inquires the prosecutor, why do they not allow any dissent within their organizations today? Revel bitterly acknowledges that "doubting their honesty is viewed in the West as being in poor taste...