Reddit reviews Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared

The following are some relevant parts of the introduction to a book called Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. I think it basically touches, directly or indirectly, on most or all of your questions. You can read part of it here and the whole book is in my Stalin collection.

>The terms “totalitarian” and “totalitarianism” entered political debate in the
1920s, primarily in reference to Italian fascism. They moved into academic debate in the late 1940s and 1950s with a distinct focus on Germany. They
gained popular and academic currency during the Cold War, mostly in reference
to the Soviet Union. Concurrently, they became a staple of secondary and
postsecondary teaching and of media debate with works like Arthur Koestler’s
Darkness at Noon and, more prominently, George Orwell’s 1984, which made
the image of the ideologically driven, mind-altering police state pervasive.
In popular parlance, totalitarianism lumped together the two most prominent
European dictatorships of the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist
Soviet Union, as expressions of absolute evil rather than any particular form of
rule. The two regimes were juxtaposed with the “righteous” path of liberal
democracy, both as a way of life and as a form of governance. [...]

>In the 1970s, the challenge to the totalitarian model by political scientists
like Jerry Hough placed the early Soviet experience (from the Revolution at
least up to the Second World War) firmly in the context of modernization and
eschewed the Nazi-Soviet comparison because of its Cold War politicization. [...]

>While an
all-powerful party with a pervasively propagated ideology and a charismatic
leader were usually part of the definitions of totalitarianism offered to Russian
readers, it was the state’s invasion of privacy that seemed to resonate the
most: “Totalitarianism is the socio-political system (stroi) characterized by an
all-embracing despotic interference of the state in all manifestations of the life
of the social organism and the life of individuals,” according to the 1991 Philosophical Dictionary. [...]

>If historians were divided about the merits of theories of totalitarianism,
they have been even less enthusiastic about using totalitarianism as an analytical tool. They found that the totalitarian model – with its claim of a
monolithic, efficient state and of a dogmatically held, mind-altering ideology –
did not describe, much less explain, historic reality. It appeared as an overly
mechanistic model foisted upon them by political scientists. Time and again,
historians have come away disenchanted from the concept because it proved
unhelpful in articulating new research questions and in organizing empirical
findings. Moreover, with the deescalation of the Cold War in the context of
East-West detente, the time seemed right to leave behind concepts and ideas
that had a distinctly polemical, if not outright ideological, quality. Empirical
historians, in particular, came to consider terms and concepts like totalitarianism contaminated by their Cold War exploitation. [...]

>While totalitarian models
overwhelmingly focused on the state, the “regime,” or the “system,” the
study of society became a subject of study early on – and here, Sovietologists
took the lead. [...]

> No [contributors to this volume] disputed the centrality of governance and the proximity,
as opposed to separation, of state and society, although the latter was
not always explicitly addressed. However, gone are ideas about the monolithic
character of the political system, of obedience enforced by terror, of society as
a receptor of leadership initiatives and, hence, also the concern with “levers
of power” and the role of ideology. The discussion has shifted and with it the
stakes in the comparative enterprise. The relevant question now is who controls
the act of governing, how effective it is (and why), and what, if any, its
limits are. A large and growing literature on the subject exists and we need not
rehearse it at this point. Suffice it to say that by generating renewed interest
in the question of legitimacy and the popularity of the regimes, social and cultural
history has enhanced rather than detracted from the centrality of politics
in both regimes.

As for the question:

>Can it be used for serious analysis or should Marxists reject this term entirely?

I would say no, it can't be the center of analysis because all existing "totalitarian models" have violated "rule #1" of historical materialism: historical context! Now, I have read insightful critiques of the USSR by, for example, Ernest Mandel who will occasionally use the term or one like it. But it wasn't the center of analysis; it was a mere jab at Stalin or "Stalinism" and the critique would've been completely unchanged had he left it out. I want to add that being against "totalitarian models" doesn't mean that you deny that violence occurred. It means that a long list of imprisonment and execution figures along with references to one man's mental pathology is not good history.

Bloodlands has its issues. It's greatest value is in providing specific testimonies of human suffering along the 'eastern front' in a popularly accessible form. For a more historically sound view of the comparisons between Hitler and Stalin, check out Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared.