K aplikaci pojmu totalitarismus na komunistické systémy: obecné problémy a česká specifika
On applying the concept of totalitarianism to communist systems: general problems and Czech conditions

Summary/Abstract: The author gives reasons why communist systems, at least in certain periods, are the ones closest to the ideal type of totalitarianism as described by Max Weber. With reference to authors such as Bertrand Badie, Ernest Gellner, Pierre Kende and Jean Leca, the author points out that communism (which is a political rather than economic system) appears throughout history in a wide variety of cultural, economic and other contexts, and therefore its manifest totalitarian tendencies cannot be adequately explained by the seemingly unfavorable terrain of the experiment. In the Soviet Union, the ideal type of totalitarianism applies not only to Stalin’s government, but to Lenin’s as well. As for communism in the Czech lands, a large majority of its characteristics matched totalitarianism, while only a small minority of its features matched authoritarianism, and not only in the period up to Stalin and Gottwald’s deaths, but also during the peak of normalization.

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